TWENTY-ONE 



Continued 



We invented the picking bar. An iron rod f( 

 of an inch in diameter, 3 feet long and tapering to a 

 rounded point. Push it down three inches back of the 

 edge of the bank and the soil falls away, leaving the 

 roots uninjured. A digging fork with round-pointed 

 tines serves as auxiliary. 



The roots are lifted up, tied in bundles and bent 

 up out of the way. From underneath them the loose 

 soil can be shoveled out without seriously damaging 

 the roots., As the work progresses, these bundles 

 must be untied, sorted out and tied up again. Did 

 you ever get trees dug this way ? 



If the trees are for long shipments each bundle of roots is then wrapped vnith wet moss and straw, and burlap 

 is sewed over the central mass of roots. These bundles of roots are slender and flexible, and can be bent around 

 like a bundle of whalebone whips without breaking. On other soils and by less careful methods of culture, and less 

 root-pruning, these roots would be larger, stiffer, brittle, and many broken off before the tree reached its destination. 



