Advantages of Early Planting, 629 



in the last half of October and the whole of iSTovember, is without 

 doubt the most advantageous season for planting. 



The idea that the stars in their courses fought for or against the 

 ancient warrior was as beautiful as it was sublime. That, however, 

 was but the offspring of fancy or the creation of poesy ; but it is a 

 sober fact that the sun himself is ranged on the side of the early 

 planter. The earth is still fairly stored with solar heat through 

 October and November. Heat is the most active recuperative power 

 in nature. Instinct and experience alike prompt us to keep our 

 wounds warm. If we cut our finger, we wrap it round with rag, not 

 merely to exclude the air, but to retain the heat. If anyone doubts 

 that the heat is an element in the healing, let him try the experiment 

 of exposiug his next cut to the cold. He will not repeat the cold 

 cure for wounds. The same care holds good with plants. Each 

 newly planted tree has received some, it may be many wounds. It 

 is impossible to transplant trees, however small, without mutilating 

 or bruising few or many of their most delicate roots. The primary 

 object of the planter is to get these wounds healed as quickly as 

 possible. There is no healing power within reach equal to a covering 

 of fine — that is, close-fitting warm earth. Treat the roots to this 

 promptly, and they begin to heal at once ; and once the start is made 

 the process of healing is soon and surely completed. 



Trees are necessarily detached from the soil in the process of 

 replanting. The old connection is severed, and a certain time must 

 elapse before a new one is established. True, the roots are covered 

 with earth, but this covering is merely mechanical, and the roots 

 have no vital hold of the ground ; they absorb neither food nor water 

 from it. This interregnum in the close hold of the roots on the soil 

 constitutes the danger of planting. AVhile the roots remain detached 

 the plant suffers in health and strength — in fact, is in danger of dying. 

 Hence the practical importance of making the period of detachment, 

 or root isolation, as short as possible. Solar heat is the great root- 

 quickener that arouses them to a sense of their new position, and 

 enables them to lay hold of and grow in the fresh soil of their new 

 abode. 



But supposing the solar heat to be flooded, frozen, or driven out 

 by the cold rains, frosts, snows, or winds of winter, the injured roots 

 will be deprived of their most powerful healer and only available 

 stimulant to their speedy settlement in their new home. This is no 

 matter of theory, but of actual experience and daily observation. 

 Plant trees at the seasons here specified, the roots heal quickly and 

 take a grip of the soil at once. Defer planting till January, and the 

 roots start slowly — often not at all in time to recuperate the trees, 

 exhausted of their fluids by their bursting buds in the early spring. 



