THE planter's GUIDE. 



229 



It would be extremely injudicious to allow the spade to 

 be used at all after the first season ; as the minute and 

 capillary absorbents of the root immediately rise to the 

 surface, and must suffer more or less even from the hoe, 

 whatever caution may be employed. In respect to the 

 Oak and the Beech, it would be prudent to allow the 

 shows to remain upon those trees for two years complete, 

 and delay all stirring of the earth round them until the 

 third summer. 



The shows used for this sort of work are generally the 

 short kind, the longer sort being reserved for the roofs of 

 houses in this district of the country. The former kind 

 after one year, and still more after two years, greatly 

 decays. By the second summer, when dug down as 

 directed above, they will serve to open and meliorate a 

 clayey or loamy soil. Should the land be very light, they 

 may be thrown off previously to the pointing with the 

 spade. 



As the stirring of the mould round newly planted trees 

 is more or less injurious, as just now stated, to the minute 

 and capillary rootlets, there is another way, in which I 

 have sometimes treated trees, and which it may be worth 

 while to mention in this place. By those planters who 

 have large designs to execute, it may be considered as less 

 laborious than hoeing round the plants for several years ; 

 and to others, whose taste has been formed on the works 

 of the great masters of landscape, and who for that reason 

 would reject whatever seems frittered into detail, or what 

 they might term spotty in the picture, the appearance of 

 circular hoed spaces round trees might at all events be 

 displeasing. To such planters I would recommend, when 

 the shows are no longer necessary, instead of pointing 

 over these spaces with the spade, immediately to sow them 

 down with grass seeds, that is, after the first or second 



