THE NEW FORESTRY. 143 



SECTION XII. NOTCH PLANTING. 



This system is described here but not recommended, 

 although it has been much favoured in the past because it is 

 a cheap and easy way of planting, but that is all that can be 

 said in its favour. The failures that occur in notch planting, 

 even when done carefully, are often excessive. Notching is 

 usually practised only where there is a sod. The workman 

 makes a T-shaped slit in the sod with the spade or notching 

 tool, then inserting the spade at the head of the " T " he pushes 

 it under the sod, down the leg of the " T," and folding the sod 

 back right and left draws the roots of the tree under, puts back 

 the sod on the roots, treads it firm, and the operation is com- 

 pleted. The bad features of notching are that the root of the 

 tree is inserted in a lop-sided, unnatural position, close to the 

 surface, where it is certain to suffer from frost in winter and 

 drought in summer ; the thin sod being an insufficient pro- 

 tection. Indeed, in dry summers we have seen the sods shrink 

 widely at the slit and expose the roots, causing the death of 

 the trees in a short time. 



SECTION XIII. PIT PLANTING BY THE SPADE. 



There is more than one way of pit planting, but the best 

 method consists in making a pit or straight-sided hole, the 

 width and depth of the spade, for the roots of the tree to be 

 dropped into perpendicularly at one side and wedged firmly up 

 to the collar. The other method of pitting may be called 

 the " spread-root " method, and as it is much insisted upon 

 by Brown, Grigor, and others, extensively practised, and very 

 expensive and useless, we propose to describe it fully. Grigor, 

 in his " Arboriculture," p. 65, recommends the most extravagant 

 method of any. For two-year transplanted hard-wood trees 

 he recommends the pits to be eighteen inches wide and fifteen 

 inches deep, but says that the more capacious the pits are formed 

 the roots of the plants can be better spread. For trees beyond 

 the age of two-year transplants, the pits, we are advised, must 

 be larger still. The pits having been dug out, the top sod is 

 chopped up and put in the bottom of the pit and the remainder 

 left to cover the roots. This spread-root method of pitting is 

 based upon the erroneous assumption that the roots of the 

 tree, instead of going down, will spread out laterally and take 



