464 Forestry Quarterly. 



In the main nursery the beds are made 1.2 m wide and 13 m 

 long (say 4 x 42 ft.), forming the normal bed of 168 square feet. 



Thorough cultivation of the soil, on which great stress is laid, is 

 secured by a specially constructed machine, consisting of a heavy 

 roller (in three parts) followed by a series of very rapidly rotating 

 knives in spiral position on an axle. These fine the soil to a depth 

 of three inches. For sowing in drills, which is used for coarser 

 seeds, this is all the preparation needed. For smaller seeds full 

 seeding is practiced, and for this the soil is once more fined care- 

 fully with narrow rakes. 



For transplant beds, which are usually seeded the year before 

 and hence well worked, a mere ploughing to twelve inch depth 

 and planing with a board suffices. 



Artificial fertilizer is tabooed, and even green manuring has not 

 been found desirable, but animal manure is largely employed after 

 having been exposed for a whole year and a half in compost heaps. 

 In these a 4-inch layer of horse manure is alternated with a layer 

 of half this depth of raw humus or street sweepings, which is 

 brought by the carload from Hamburg. The weedings are also 

 added, the heat of the manure destroying the germinative power 

 of the seeds. A ditch around the compost heap gathers the 

 leached waters, which are either poured over the compost or 

 placed on the land. 



This manure is uniformly distributed over the harvested fields 

 in spring or fall after being plowed, and then again plowed. For 

 deciduous trees the largest amount used is 1,400 cubic feet to the 

 acre, for conifers about one-half; for certain species, Douglas Fir, 

 Sitka Spruce, Black Locust, which are apt with too good treat- 

 ment not to ripen their wood before the early frosts, no manure is 

 used. 



Besides the thorough soil preparation extensive water-works 

 with pumps, water-tower of 150 feet, and four to two-inch piping, 

 prevent any chance of drouth. 



Drill sowing is practiced only for a few deciduous species, and 

 mainly to avoid transplanting, when every second row is used in 

 the second or third year. 



No fancy tools are used for making drills, a simple rake with 

 hollow tine teeth properly distanced suffices to make the drills in 

 the length direction of the beds, and after sowing by hand, an 

 ordinary wooden rake finishes the work. 



