Whitelees Forest - planting trees on ploughing
One of a set of slides found in Aberdeenshire District Office showing operations in Whitelees Forest. This one is annotated 'D90/-/t Whitelees 1976'
The ploughing configuration shown in this slide is fairly dramitic by todays planting standards. The D90 refers to a double mould board plough head which threw out two ribbons of soil from a depth of up to 90cms. The /-/ signifies that there was no tine sock and the /t signifies that it was a trailed plough. The throw of ribbons appears to set the distance between the planting positions across the ditch at over 3.5 metres!
The D60/-/t ploughs (max depth 60cms) were much more commonly used in this era as they could get the planted trees spacing much closer to the desired 2m x 2m although wider spacing was in vogue for a period in some areas. In the larger picture the planted trees can just be seen in ribbons of peat. Note the red planting bag, the early use of the lighter polypropelene material bags.
Information of location and who the identity of the lone planter is would be very welcome
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Groups: Forestry in Action, Tractors Ploughs and Drainage Machines
I remember the red planting bags. They had white bags in later years.
This shows Double-furrow Ploughing (There is only one Disc and it is in the middle, splitting the earth in two, and throwing the material to either side of the drain, not just one side like a Single-furrow Plough. It can produce a much deeper drain than the single-furrow plough. The planting squad liked this pattern of ploughing because the material thrown up by the plough formed a flat-topped ribbon easy to walk alongside or on while planting trees)' Comment left on 29 December 2007 at 11:56 by Norman Davidson for Brian Speirs