THE YOUNG FARMER'S MANUAL. 211 



RED CEDAR FOR HEDGES. 



" On barren cliffs, the hardy cedars red, 

 Clinging to crevices, lift up their heads." TUPEEB." 



284. The red cedar is acknowledged, by the most reliable au 

 thority, to be one of the best plants in America, for both orna 

 mental and field hedges. It has more desirable qualities to recom 

 mend it than any other known plant which is used for making 

 hedges. If it only lore thorns, it would be incomparably better 

 for hedges than any other plant whose merits have been thor 

 oughly tested as a hedge plant. It is extremely hardy, and 

 adapts itself to both barren and fertile soils, although it flourishes 

 on a rich soil as much better, as any other plant ; and it attains a 

 great age, is as highly ornamental as the most fastidious can desire ; 

 and is not liable to blight, or winter-kill, or to be injured by in 

 sects. No other plant bears shearing any better, or with less 

 injury, than the cedar ; and a hedge of this kind of plants may 

 be sheared into almost any form with great facility. 



285. The best mode of obtaining the young plants is, to gather 

 the berries or seed as late in autumn as possible, before the ground 

 freezes, and sow them in drills, covered about one inch deep with 

 some very light mellow earth. But few seeds will vegetate the 

 first season, but if the soil be kept well cultivated and free from 

 noxious weeds during the growing season, the second season they 

 will appear in abundance. If the soil be deep, mellow, and rich, 

 they will grow from one to two feet in height the first season ; if 

 the soil is rather poor, and the little quicks are obliged to grow or 

 die among weeds, if they grow six inches high the first season, it 

 will be all that can be expected. The plants should be thinned 

 out when they stand too thick, and transplanted in rows for a year 

 or two. When they are from two to three feet high, they should 

 be planted out for hedges, in soil prepared as recommended, as 

 early in the spring as it will answer to work in the soil. If they 

 are set in only one row, they should be not less than twenty inches 

 apart, and if in two rows, two feet apart, with the plants of one row 



