PLANTING. 65 



planting extensively, as young plantations always thrive best 

 when screened from strong winds. On old arable land the 

 planting of Scots Pine is apt to induce root-disease ; and on 

 poor soil, especially if limy, an admixture of White Alder is 

 often beneficial through the supplies of humus obtained from 

 its cast foliage, and through its power of throwing up root- 

 suckers plentifully. Quick-growing or hardy kinds of trees, like 

 Larch, Pine, Rowan, and Birch, are sometimes planted as nurses 

 to protect less hardy but more valuable kinds from frost; but 

 the nurses should be cut out as soon as they have served their 

 purpose, otherwise they suppress the trees they were intended 

 to assist, and grow up into a poor, thin, unprofitable wood, 

 perhaps not bearing half the crop it might have yielded. 

 The usual methods of planting are 



1. NOTCHING OR SLIT-PLANTING, usually at 3 or 3 ft. apart (4840 or 



3556 per acre) 



(1) CUSTOM AEY BRITISH NOTCHING, with the ditching-spade or 



similar tool. 



(2) VERTICAL NOTCHING, with a flat -faced, iron-shod dibble, 



ditching - spade, or similar tool (e.g., Mansfield spade, a 

 ditching-spade with horizontal treads at top). 



2. PITTING, usually at 4 ft. apart (2722 per acre) 



(1) CUSTOMARY BRITISH PITTING, with pick, pick - hoe, or 



mattock. 



(2) PITTING WITH A C- OR S - CONICAL OB A CYLINDRICAL 



SPADE. 



3. MOUND-PLANTING, in rows upon mounds thrown up from ditches 



or heaps of earth on wet soil. 



Naked plants are generally used in Britain, but plants with 

 conical or cylindrical balls of earth round their roots can be 

 lifted from any not too light soil by using the C-conical or the 

 cylindrical spade, and transplanted into pits made on the plant- 

 ing ground by similar tools of the same size (Fig. 12, p. 69). 



1. Notching or slit-planting of any description is only suit- 

 able for a very light sandy or friable soil, in which the roots 



E 



