CHAPTEB III 



PREPARING GROUND FOR TRANSPLANTS, AND 

 TRANSPLANTING 



Greeticropping — Manuring and cleaning crops — Preparing ground 

 for the reception of plants — The time for transplanting — Lining 

 out seedlings and larger transplants — Keeping the plants cleaa 

 — Pruning nursery plants — Lifting transplants in nursery. 



Green Cropping. 



When land is continually cropped with trees without 

 a break it becomes impoverished, owing to the trees 

 absorbing all or most of the available plant food, without 

 returning it annually with a fall of leaves such as takes 

 place in a forest. The supply must therefore be replaced 

 for the use of future crops. This is done either through 

 the medium of a green crop or by applying farmyard 

 manure and growing a root crop before again lining out 

 transplants. 



Leguminous plants have the power of extracting nitrogen 

 from the air and of giving it off to the soil in a form avail- 

 able as plant food by the aid of bacilli present in the little 

 warthke tubercles on their roots. 



For this reason they are often used as green-crops in a 

 nurser^' to enrich soil that has been impoverished by 

 continual cropping of trees. Lupins, lucerne, and tares, 

 are the plants most commonly used for the purpose. 



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