Mrs. Hale's Receipts for the Million: Containing Four Thousand Five Hundred and Forty-five Receipts, Facts, Directions, etc. in the Useful, Ornamental, and Domestic Arts
John Stuart Mill · en
1135. _To cure Wounds in Trees._--Wounds in trees are best cured by
covering them with a coat of common lead paint without turpentine
(for turpentine is poison to vegetation) in the sun, on a fine dry
day.
1136. _Trees for Shade, Nursery Trees, &c._--Forest Trees selected
for shade should be of kinds not liable to be attacked by worms and
insects. The rock or sugar maple is always remarkably free from
worms, and it makes the most dense and beautiful shade of all our
deciduous trees. This is becoming a very popular tree, and we hope to
see it extensively propagated. There is no more risk in transplanting
this than the elm, and the limbs are not liable to be broken by the
winds and snow.
We believe it is generally admitted that transplanted trees succeed
best when their early growth has been in soil similar to that for
which they are destined to be placed permanently. If raised in such
a soil, and transplanted to that which is thin and poor, they seem
to receive a shock from which with difficulty they recover. As a
gentleman once remarked, it is like feeding a calf with all the milk
he will take till he is six months old, and then suddenly turning him
off to live on a short pasture.
Large trees may be as successfully planted as small ones. The mode
and result of an experiment made by Messrs. Pomeroy and Dutton, of
Utica, are thus given: Those gentlemen transplanted trees, comprising
maples, elm, beech, &c., some thirty feet in height, which were
transplanted without being shorn of any of their branches. The
process of removal was as follows:--In the fall, before the frost, a
trench was dug around the trees selected, from ten to fifteen feet in
diameter, and the roots severed. In the winter when the ground had
become solid from freezing, the trees were pulled out by the aid of
oxen and levers, with the mass of earth firmly attached to the roots.
They were then transported erect on a strong sled, built for the
purpose, and set out.
These trees grew in open land, a mile and a half from the city. They
put on their foliage last spring, as if wholly unconscious that they
were not still in their native soil, and the enterprising gentlemen
who undertook this unusual course, are rewarded with shade trees
which by the old practice it would have required twenty years to
produce.
Summer pruning is sometimes necessary in order to give form and
proper direction to nursery trees, and standard trees may need
thinning, in order to expose the fruit to light and air; but in
pruning trees thoroughly, particularly if large limbs are to be cut
off, it is best to defer the business till the last of July, August,
or the former part of September.