GARDEN LABOURS WITH PLANTS. 



235 



SuBSECT. 2. — Garden Labours vnth Plants. 



543. Garden labours with plants may be reduced to sowing, cutting-, 

 clipping, mowing, and weeding ; all of which may be performed at most 

 seasons, and during moist weather as well as dry. In the first three of 

 these labours, it must be borne in mind that growing trees and large shrubs 

 should not be deprived of their branches when the sap is rising in spring, 

 on account of the loss of that fluid which would be sustained at that season ; 

 that wounds can only be healed over when made close to a bud or shoot; and 

 that the healing process proceeds from the alburnum and cambium, and not 

 from the bark. For the operations of weeding and mowing with the scythe, 

 wet weather is preferable to dry ; but the grass requires to be dry when the 

 mowing machine is employed. Clipping may be performed in wet weather. 



544. Sawing is the most convenient mode of separating large branches, 

 because it effects the separation with less labour than cutting with the axe 

 or the bill, and also with less waste of wood. In sawing off large branches, 

 whether close to the trunk, or at a distance from it, it is advisable to cut a 

 notch in the under side of the branch, or to enter the saw for a few inches in 

 depth there, and in the same plane with the proposed saw cut, in order to 

 prevent the bark from being torn down when the branch is sawn through 

 and drops off. It is also advisable to smooth over the section with a chisel 

 or knife, in order that it may not retain moisture ; and to cover the entire 

 wound with a cataplasm of some sort, or with putty, or with paint, in order to 

 exclude the air, and by that means to facilitate the process of healing. 



545. Cutting and sawing are essentially the same operation; for the 

 common saw is formed of a series of wedges cut in the edge of a thin plate 

 of steel, and the knife only differs in having these wedges so small and so 

 close together as not to be perceptible to the naked eye ; the asperities pro- 

 duced in the edge of the knife by sharpening, acting in the same manner as 

 the teeth of the saw. The blade of the knife thus becomes a sawing wedge. 

 When a wedge is entered and equally resisted on both sides of the body 

 separated, they are equally fractured ; but when it is so entered that the 

 resistance is more on one side than on the other, the fracture will be 

 greatest on that side which offers the least resistance. On these facts are 

 founded the operation of cutting living plants, whether with the axe, the 

 bill, the chisel, or the knife. As in cutting living plants a smooth unbruised 

 section will less interfere with the vital energies of the plant, and conse- 

 quently will be more easily healed over than a rough one ; hence, in all 

 cutting or amputating, the rough or fractured section ought to be on the 

 part amputated. In separating a branch, or cutting through a stem, with 

 an axe, bill, or chisel, this result is effected by the obliquity of the 

 strokes of the instrument to the direction of the body to be cut through, 

 and with a knife by drawing it more or less obliquely across the shoot ; 

 but principally by the non-resistance offered by the part of the shoot to 

 be cut off. Hence, all shoots cut from living plants ought to have the cut 

 made in an outward direction from the stem or root of the plant ; because 

 if the reverse of this practice were adopted, as is sometimes done in plashing 

 hedges, the fractured section would be left on the plant. Every cut made in 

 a living plant ought to be sufficiently near a bud or a shoot to be healed 

 over by its influence, and the section made should never be more oblique 

 than is necessary to secure its soundness and smoothness. In general, 



