Note 65 — PART IV. NOTICES OF AUTHORS RELATIVE TO TIMBER. (continued 3)

We have raised crops among young trees (as well timber as fruit trees), not four yards apart, by plough culture, and have found the process, after the ploughmen and horses were accustomed to it, not much more expensive than common cultivation, and the crop, till the trees became too close, scarcely inferior. By means of a long muzzle to the plough standing out towards the left side, and a driver to the horses beside the ploughman, we succeeded in getting the two first furrows lapped a little over each other in the row of trees, where the gathering of the ridge commenced (we gathered up at every other row). In the row of trees where the finishing of the ploughing of the ridge occurred, we were obliged to leave a stripe of ground about two feet wide, to be dug by the spade. The horses required to be yoked in file, and to drag by ropes (traces) rather than by chains, as the bark of the trees was liable to be rubbed off by the latter. The more to guard against rubbing, we had the swingletree constructed so that the trace-ropes came out from a hole in the ends, without any hook. In harrowing the ground, one man is required to lead the horses, and another to direct the harrows. In rich soil, under cultivation of green crop, in this manner, trees progress very rapidly, and from the open arrangement acquire very healthy constitutions. Of course, when not coniferæ, the plants require a little more attention to train to one leader and equality of feeders, than when close planted. We should consider plough cultivation of young woods, provided ploughmen as expert and careful as the Scots could be obtained, much more worthy the attention of the English planter than the Withers’ system (trenching). Need we mention, that in green crop, every thing depends upon plenty of manure and of well-timed plough and horse hoe labour? Excepting in the case of larch, we should dread no injury to the trees or timber from plenty of manure.