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SUGGESTIONS ON PLANTING— (Iowa Experience.) 



Mr. Suel Foster, of Muscatine, Iowa, in a prize essay on forest-tree planting, offers 

 the following suggestions as applicable in his State : — 



" The larch is of tolerably rapid growth ; growing half-an inch or more in diameter 

 each year for the first ten years, and the next ten years fully equal to one inch. This is in 

 size equal to our black walnut, and it grows much better and straighter. The little trees 

 should be bought of nurserymen, for it is a nice and particular thing to raise the larch 

 or evergreens from seed. I would recommend to the farmers of Iowa to buy European 

 larch at two years old at $10 to $15 per thousand. They should be set in nursery rows, four 

 and a-half feet apart, and one foot in the row, so that when one row is taken out it will make a 

 waggon-road through the grove. Larch must be moved very early in the spring, for they 

 are among the very earliest trees to start to grow. . The ground should be ploughed very 

 deep in the fall, then ploughed in the spring, as soon'as possible ; harrowed and pulver- 

 ized very finely by turning the harrow bottom up the last time. Then stretch a line and 

 set with a spade. Have a mud-hole to dabble the roots all in. While the man usesthe 

 spade, a boy can handle plants. About 2,000 will be a day's work, and will cover about 

 a quarter of an acre. They must be carefully ploughed and hoed for two years, and if 

 the weeds start too quick in May and June, the third and fourth years they should be 

 ploughed. 



"Cost — 8,000 plants for an acre, $80; setting out, $8; ploughing and hoeing the 

 first year, $8 ; ploughing and harrowing the land before setting, $4 ; second year, $4 ; 

 two years after, $i ; interest on the land at $50; eight years, at 8 per cent. ==$3 2. 

 Total cost of an acre of European larch, at eight years, $140. 



Planting of the Ash. 



" Mr. J. L. Budd, now of Ames, Iowa, in a paper published in the Transactions of the 

 Northern Illinois Horticultural Society (1867-'68), advises keeping the seeds of the ash 

 through the winter in kegs or boxes, mixed with clean moist sand, taking care that they 

 become neither too wet or too dry. Freezing will do no harm. The ground should be 

 marked and prepared as for corn, and planted at the intersections, placing four to six 

 s«)eds in a hill. They should be carefully cultivated, and the next spring thinned to one 

 plant in each hill, the vacancies being supplied. By planting thus thickly, the young 

 trees get a straight growth. At the end of six years, every alternate row north and 

 south should be thinned out, and at the end of ten years every alternate three in each 

 row. When twelve years old, on good soil and with proper culture the first four years, 

 the grove would have 12,000 trees on 10 acres, averaging eight inches in diameter. By 

 cutting the stump close to the ground, and covering with a light furrow on each side, a 

 second growth is obtained in eight or ten years more valuable than the first." 



Professor C. S. Sargent, in speaking of this timber, says : — 



"To develop its best qualities the white ash should be planted in a cool, deep, moist, 

 but well-drained soil, where it wiU make a rapid growth. That the plantation may be 

 as early profitable as possible, the young trees should be inserted in rows three feet apart, 

 the plants being two feet apart in the rows. This would give 7,260 plants to the acre, 

 which should be gradually thinned until 108 trees' are left standing, twenty feet apart 

 each way. The first thinning, which might be made at the end of ten years, would give 

 4,000 hoop poles, which at present price would be worth $400. 



" The remaining thinnings, made at different periods up to twenty-five or thirty 

 years, would produce some three thousand trees more, worth at least three times as much 

 as the first thinnings. Such cuttings would pay all the expenses of planting, the care of 

 plantation, and the interest on the capital invested, and would leave the land covered 

 with trees capable of being turned into money at a moment's notice, or whose value 

 would increase for a hundred years making no mean inheritance for the descendants of a 



