358 THE ASH TREE. 
of February, when they should be sown in open dry weather, 
then, or early in March. If sown a month or two earlier the 
tender plants would appear too soon, and be apt to suffer from 
frosts ; if sown a little later, the seeds are apt to vegetate in 
the pit, which occasions the production of crooked-rooted, 
plants. 
In the second February or March, then (about fifteen months 
after the seeds are gathered), the seeds should be taken from 
the pit and sown in good loamy friable soil, into beds four feet 
‘wide. It will suit if they are made to follow turnips, potatoes, 
carrots, or any crop which had a fair quantity of manure applied 
to it. The beds should be opened up by a deep cuffing, and the 
seeds should be spread with a spade, and afterwards regulated 
with a rake, so that on the average each seed may occupy 
about two square inches of surface space, thus allowing from 
eight to nine hundred plants to occupy the lineal yard of the 
bed. After the seeds are sown the ground should be either 
rolled or beat with the back of a spade, after which the 
cuffing should be drawn on covering the seed fully half an 
inch deep. 
Another mode of laying down an ash crop sometimes 
practised, which may be most convenient to those who grow 
it on a small scale, is to sow the seeds at the time they are 
collected, or the spring thereafter, allowing the beds to remain 
the first summer either vacant, or growing any light vegetable 
crop, such as garden-turnips, radishes, cabbage-plants, ete. 
In this case the young ash plants are apt to appear before the 
1 It may be proper to notice here a great mistake, very common in books 
giving directions on the growth of the ash from seed, which is calculated to 
mislead the inexperienced cultivator. Thus Loudon (Arboretum Britannicum, 
page 1224) directs that the seeds, which are ripe in October, should be taken 
to the rotting heap, where they should be turned over several times in course of 
the winter, and in February they may be removed, freed from the sand by sift- 
ing, and sown in beds of any middling soil. ‘‘The plants,” he continues, 
“may be taken up at the end of the year, and planted in nursery lines.” This 
mistake appears to have been copied by subsequent writers on the ash tree. 
Now to an experienced grower this error is harmless, because he knows 
that at the end of the year the plants will not be in existence ; but any other, 
expecting a crop as stated, concludes that the seeds are lost, and crops the 
ground with something else. 
