Science and Practice in Farm CultivationBuckman, James
Science
Science and Practice in Farm Cultivation
Buckman, James
Agriculture
We prefer that no dead materials should be put to a living fence; for if
there are gaps, it will be best to dig the ground well and put in some
young quicks, fencing with posts and rails, to guard the plants as well
as impound the cattle. Mending gaps with thorns only aggravates the
evil, as the living part of the fence is so interfered with by the dead
matter that it grows but imperfectly, and the dead materials soon rot
away, leaving a greater gap to be re-mended.
We have seen gaps tried to be repaired by old quicks, but this seldom
succeeds—for if they grow, they are never bushy enough to be repellant;
but they often die altogether, and at best with old plants, young quicks
will repair the mischief in less time.
Seeing the difficulty there is sometimes in getting quicks to grow well
in hedge gaps, it is not uncommon to fill up with various kinds of
hedge-row plants, such as hazel, whitebeam, spindle-tree, dogwood,
maple, &c.; but the objection to these is, that they are often not
repellant in any way, and they help to make weaker places broader than
they found them, and, indeed, ultimately get possession of the greater
part of the hedge-row. There is, then, nothing better to mend a
whitethorn hedge than quicks, and they will grow if attended to for the
first two or three years; but why they usually fail is, that if planted
in gaps they are usually closely hemmed in by old thorns, or allowed to
become smothered by weeds.
With respect to very old hedges, made up of all sorts of materials, we
prefer cutting them down about three feet from the ground, leaving all
the stubs to branch out, than to attempt to layer as shrubs, and then
the whitethorn succeeds even less with plashing. Where, however, we have
rough, but, after all, not repellant fences, we should like to see them
re-planted, by which they could mostly be curtailed, and at the same
time opportunity may be taken to get rid of some of them altogether, or
to make them in a more convenient direction.
We are now in possession of a hedge composed of everything but hawthorn,
and somewhere about twelve feet high. It is without gaps, but still
pregnable at any point, by reason of the want of armature in the shrubs
of which it is composed. Still, as it stands on the top of a bank five
feet high, the mound and hedge together is not so bad a fence as its
materials might warrant.
We here give a list of the plants of which this fence is composed, in
order to the more clear explanation of what is to follow:—
PLANTS IN A HEDGE AT BRADFORD ABBAS, ON THE INFERIOR OOLITE.
Parts.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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