(8 



THE PRACTICAL GARDENER. 



curing summer, as to cleaning, hoeing, and weeding. The 

 Ibllowing spring the remainder should be taken from the 

 >eed-beds, and in like manner planted out. Indeed, it is a 

 rule from which only extraordinary circumstances can warrant 

 a depiu iure, that all seedlings, when two years old, should 

 be taken up; if this be not attended to, the roots become 

 naked, and the fibres few in number. The beds at this time 

 on which the seeds were sown may be all destroyed, for it is 

 only in the case of thorns, hollies, and a few similar sorts, 

 whose seeds sometimes continue to come up for two, three, or 

 more years, after sowing, that any more plants can be expected 

 after the second year. In taking up all i)lants from the seed- 

 beds more attention is required than is usually paid to them. 

 The spade should be judiciously used for the purpose of loosen- 

 ing the soil, and the plants pulled up gently with all their fibres 

 and roots uninjured, for although the trees of which we are 

 now treating are hardy and indigenous, they are nevertheless 

 tender and easily injured in their young state. As they are 

 taken up from the seed-bed, they should be immediately laid 

 in by the heels, unless the operation of transplantation goes 

 on sufficiently fast to use them as they are taken up. They 

 should certainly not be allowed to be on the surface in heaps, 

 with their roots exposed to the frosty winds, which often pre- 

 vail at this season, nor to the scorching rays of the noon- 

 tide sun, which is equally injurious to them. The operation 

 of transplanting would be more successfully done in damp 

 showery days, provided the ground was not too wet, but this, 

 when there is much to be done in this way, cannot be expected 

 to be always the case ; as a simple and excellent succedaneum, 

 we would recommend puddling the roots previously to plant- 

 ing, which will not take up much time, and will evidently 

 tend to enable the plants to sustain their removal with much 

 less chance of injury. We may here observe, that when trees 

 are to be kept in the nursery longer than three or four years 

 after their first transplanting, that they should be, if not every 

 year, at least every second year, taken up and re-planted, 

 allowing them greater room every time they are removed, 

 in order that they may have room to extend themselves, and 

 also a proper breadth of surface to stand on, to aflford sufTi- 

 ciciit nutriment for ilu-ir roots. 



