Newton Nursery dipping transplants 1981
Photographs courtesy of Alan Duncan, Newton Nursery.
A close up shot of an unidentified nursery worker in protective clothing and masks hand dipping bundles of Sitka spruce into a tank containing insecticide. The insecticide was used to help reduce the attacks by pine weevils on newly planted trees in restocking sites which if not protected often resulted in high death rates of planted trees.
The insecticide use in the early days would have been a formulation of Lindane (Gamma-col) which was discovered to have significant potential health risks and the treatment product changed to formulations of permethrin with alternative more mechanised treatment methods.
Only the foliage and stems of the loose bundle of plants was dipped in the product, the roots being kept upright and out of the liquid.
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