Band books

The puddling was
easily done. We sawed an oil barrel in halves, placed these halves on a
stone boat, filled them two-thirds full of water, and added a lot of
fine clay. Into this thin mud the roots of each tree were dipped before
planting.
My duty was to shorten the roots that were too long, and to cut away the
bruised and broken ones. The top pruning was to be done after the trees
were all set and banked. The stock was fine in every respect,--fully up
to promise. Watching Johnson set his first tree convinced me that he
knew more about planting than I did. He lined and levelled it; he pawed
surface dirt into the hole, and churned the roots up and down; more
dirt, and he tamped it; still more dirt, and he tramped it; yet more
dirt, and he stamped it until the tree stood like a post; then loose
dirt, and he left it. I was sure Johnson knew his business too well to
need advice from a tenderfoot, so I went back to my root pruning.
We were ten days planting these thirty-four hundred trees, but we did it
well, and the days were short.


Pages:
91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115