THE YOUNG FARMER'S MANUAL. 199 



can be obtained, or with well-rotted barnyard manure. It would 

 be great folly to transplant a lot of quicks in a soil where they 

 would not make a good growth the first season. It is no uncom 

 mon thing to meet with barren spots in fields that are considered 

 to be in a good state of cultivation, and whenever a hedge is to 

 be made through such a place, it must be plowed and pulverized, 

 and enriched thoroughly, or we may rest assured that in such 

 places hedges will prove a complete failure. 



HOW TO OBTAIN THE QUICKS. 



264. "When a farmer contemplates making a hedge, he should 

 sow the seed in drills in the nursery, in a soil which is not in a 

 better state of cultivation than the soil where the hedge is to be 

 made. If quicks be taken from a nursery where the soil has 

 been manured very highly, and transplanted where the soil is of 

 an inferior character, they will not grow as much in a season, if 

 they grow at all, as if they had been taken from a soil inferior to 

 the soil into which they are now to be transplanted. The prac 

 tice of taking plants from a rich, well-cultivated soil, and trans 

 planting them into a soil inferior to the one from which they 

 were taken, operates like taking a well-fed animal from his regu 

 lar allowance of grain and good hay, and compelling him to sub 

 sist on straw only. In order to have the quicks grow well, the 

 soil where the hedge is to be planted should be quite as rich, 

 mellow, and fertile as that soil is from which the quicks are taken 

 when they are to be transplanted. For this simple reason the 

 farmer will succeed much better in his attempts to grow a hedge 

 if he sows his own seed and raises his own quicks, than he will to 

 purchase of professional nurserymen, whose grounds are kept in 

 a high state of cultivation by an abundant supply of good ma 

 nure. Farmers often purchase quicks and the same thing holds 

 good with fruit-trees of men whose grounds have been made 

 as rich as they could conveniently be made with manure ; and 

 although they have transplanted them in the best manner, and 

 have cultivated the soil on which they stand in the most thorough 

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