FKOM SEED TO GROVE. 27 



CHAPTER III. 



FROM SEED TO GROVE. 



Few amateur orange growers realize the importance of 

 good, thrifty stock at the very outset, but it is a point 

 that can not be too strongly insisted on, for herein lies the 

 corner-stone of a successful grove. Given poor, diseased, 

 stunted stock, and you may lavish time, money, care upon 

 it, and be worse off in five years' time than when you began ; 

 given good, thrifty stock, and half the time, money, and 

 care will find you, in the same space, the owner of as fine 

 a young grove as one would need to possess. 



How to secure such reliable stock? 



Well, there are three ways: one, to go to a neighbor 

 who has preceded you by several years and has seedlings 

 for sale, purchase them and bud them yourself; another, 

 to purchase trees ready budded from a reliable nursery- 

 man; and still another, which will best suit a shallow 

 pocket, is to plant the seed, and when the trees are a suit- 

 able size bud them yourself. 



There is a right and wrong way of doing every thing in 

 this world, and it is sometimes curious to see how fre- 

 quently the wrong way is chosen when the right way 

 seems just as easy, and is certainly productive of more 

 satisfactory results. Now, in this apparently simple matter 

 of planting seeds, most persons will take the seeds hap- 

 hazard from any orange they may happen upon, and 

 going out, will punch a hole in the ground with a finger, 

 drop in a seed, give it a pat downward, and go away ex- 

 ultant, and return in a week or two expecting to dig up a 

 fine, healthy plant. Others will push the seed down into 

 boxes and water them carefully every day and rot . them ; 



