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Tools for Hand Planting

Planting machines are great labor-saving devices where the terrain is favorable to their use. Men are usually more willing to work with machines--the work appears to be, and often is, lighter. However, there are planting sites where the terrain or surface obstructions make machine planting impractical. The steep, rough, stoney lands--often burns and cutovers--are the very places that planting today seems justifiable. On these lands hand tools are usually a must. By and large the same hand planting tools used in the United States 40 to 50 years ago are still being used (see figs. 1-3). The planting iron, or wedge-shaped bar, does well in sand and in planting pine, but it is an inadequate tool for planting spruce or for use on rocky ground. The grub-hoe, mattock, spade, and shovel have been used in hand planting, but were made for other purposes.


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Author(s): Henry I. Baldwin

Publication: Tree Planters' Notes - Issue 77 (1966)