362 



AMERICAN FORESTRY 



A Seed Bed Nursery at Lake Clear Junction, New York, Containing Three Million Seedlings in Two Acres 



fers to reforest abandoned and stony 

 pastures ; and the beds for this crate 

 work, with its intensive planting, should 

 be enriched with well rotted leaf mold 

 compost, but not with commercial fer- 

 tilizers, as many of these are extremely 

 unsuited to wild forest seedlings. The 

 balance of the nursery space should be 

 devoted to the broadleaved species, oaks, 

 maples, ashes, tulips, hickories and any 

 other specialties that you intend to 

 raise. This soil should be cleared forest 

 loam with northeast exposure, a cleared 

 forest meadow in the woodlot, and the 

 seeding done much as in European 

 practice with the seeds in rows, spaced 

 some three inches in the row and trans- 

 planted and clipped in their second 

 spring. They are ready to set out in 

 the forest in the third year, that is the 

 fourth spring, and should be set on 

 about nine-inch spacing with this end 

 in view. The ground in between is 

 covered with a couch of dead leaves 

 with the object of keeping in the 

 moisture of the soil, keeping down the 

 germination of weeds and adding to 

 the nutriment of the young plants by 

 the gradual decomposition of the dead 

 leaves — in efifect Nature's own way of 

 caring for her little ones in the forest. 

 A reasonable amount of dead twigs and 

 limbs should be scattered over this 



couch of dead leaves in between the 

 rows, for the amount of leaves that the 

 wind can steal in a single season is 

 almost incredible to one who has be- 

 lieved that his work ended with carting 

 the leaves and spreading them over the 

 bed. 



As to the depth to plant seeds and 

 the time, an inch deep is plenty for 

 acorns and nuts, much deeper for black 

 walnut, half an inch for maple and 

 ash. Almost all of the them are planted 

 as early as possible in the fall and 

 usually sprout and get to about four 

 inches high before going into that win- 

 ter. Red maple seeds in the spring, in 

 May, and its young ones have all sum- 

 mer to grow in. The conifers all sprout 

 in the spring, and are best seeded in 

 April and May after the frosts are well 

 out. If put in earlier they are quite 

 apt to rot, for Nature's way of planting 

 them consists in giving the seed blown 

 from the cone in the fall a whole winter 

 to work its way down to the quickening 

 combination of humus and mineral soil, 

 and if put in this soil without the heat 

 to start germ growth the seed quickly 

 rots. Ash seeds should be gathered in 

 the fall as soon as ripe and piled with 

 sand and leaf compost in beds not over 

 ten inches deep. They are to be turned 

 over several times during the winter 



