54 THE LARCH. 



come up regularly and well, about two plants should be 

 upon a square inch. The seed should be lightly covered, 

 say about a quarter of an inch deep. The beds require 

 very early and careful weeding, and no weeds should 

 be allowed at any time in them to injure the plants. 



The seedlings require close attention at all times, 

 to see that they do not crowd each other, that no weeds 

 encroach, and that no insects attack them. For catching 

 grub, nothing is better than laying pieces of turf on 

 the surface of the ground, when they go underneath 

 them, and are easily collected and killed. Others re- 

 commend boring holes in the ground with a sharp, 

 smooth dibble, as a sort of trap for them to fall into. 

 When the plants are close in the beds, they should be 

 thinned out at the end of the first year's growth, and 

 transplanted into lines to remain for one year. If the 

 plants in the beds the second year are growing too fast, 

 stirring them up with a fine pronged steel fork partially 

 arrests their growth, and is otherwise beneficial. Plants 

 two years old are fit for bare moorland planting, and 

 should never, on any account, be allowed to remain 

 more than two years in the nursery lines without being 

 transplanted. At three years old they are sufficiently 

 high to stand above almost any herbage, but larger and 

 older plants are not so safe to transplant, and it is very 

 undesirable that a larch plant be at any time so far 

 checked in its growth as to cause it to lose its top 

 leader. 



No plant takes to the soil more readily than a 

 small larch does, but it is far otherwise with lar^^je 



