PLANTING TREES BY MACHINERY

Shannon News, 18 January 1924, Page 2

PLANTING TREES BY MACHINERY

Machines have been devised to domany things, but one of the most remarkable i somes used by the United States Forest Service, which sets out seedling trees 10 times as fast as the old hand-planting method/ Its" capacit- (savs the New York Herald) is from 1-1,000 to 15,000 trees a day,'"-'while a man might set out 1200 to 1500 if he were active. It is an adaptation of a- machine made to set out tomato and cabbage plants, and it takes three men and two horses to operate it at capcity. In appearance the treeplanter is something like a niowing- ! machine and just about'the same size. I It has a ploughshare arrangement in ' front, and 'hack of the feeder are two metal wheels, which push the dirt I around the recently placed tree seedlings and nack it down. It is run «it a speed of the team's walk, and the two men needled beside the driver aro kept busy placing the seedlings in the planting hopper. Extra features of the tree-planter include a marker that indicates where the next row is to go. and two hoppers, containing- water and fertiliser, that function W a can system, dropping the nutriment for the young trees around their .roots just before the metal wheels fill in and tramp the furrow;