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Profitable Tree Planting — Part 2

Hon. J. D. Lyman, of Exeter, New Hampshire, gives the reasons for his success with white pine. He gathers cones in early September, spreads them in a dry, airy room, and when they open beats out the seeds. This is about a fortnight after they are gathered. He prefers to sow the seed at once in beds. For three years the young seedlings are cultivated, lath screens protecting them from the hot sun. Then they are ready to set out. If they are to grow unpruned and be cut at forty years or so for boxboards they are set nine or ten feet apart each way. If clear timber of the best quality is desired, they are set four feet apart each way so that they will grow tall and lose their lower limbs. This kind of timber requires longer time to grow, and it must be pruned and thinned as it needs it. The price it brings is higher. Access to market and cost of the necessary labour determine which course to pursue. Mr. Lyman believes that a thickly planted young forest properly thinned will in fifty years produce as much lumber as it would produce in twice that time if left unthinned.

Hon. Augustus Pratt of Massachusetts once planted thirteen acres of blueberry thicket to white pines. It took one man eight days to do it. Forty years later he went in and cut from eight acres between forty and forty-five cords of box-board logs which he sold at the mill for $6 per cord. He got considerable fuel out of the tops. The five acres remaining he held untouched for a few years--then sold them for more than $1,000.

A small pine forest in Enfield, Connecticut, is noteworthy. Two quarts of pine seed per acre were sown in September broadcast with rye on the worn-out sand plain, which had been first ploughed and harrowed, then rolled. No further attention was paid to either crop. The rye shaded the seedlings as long as they required shade. The slow, imperfect growth achieved is not what it would have been if Mr. Cutter had had it in his care. But the soil has been enriched by the litter of the forest, and there is considerable good timber. Desert land has been reclaimed.

Certain facts have been learned from the study of white-pine plantations. They are worth bringing together and emphasising.