70 FLORIDA FRUITS ORANGES. 



CHAPTER VII. 



HOW TO PLANT. 



The last thing, before you are ready to set out your 

 grove, is to have the ground thoroughly plowed. This 

 should not be the first time, however, for it is not well to 

 plant trees in freshly plowed land, as the soil is always 

 more or less sour, and needs sun and air to sweeten it. 

 If it is practicable to break up the land for the future 

 grove several months before setting out the trees, and to 

 plant and turn under a crop of cow-peas with or even 

 without a light sprinkling of lime, so much the better, 

 although this is not absolutely necessary. The ground 

 thus prepared, the next thing in order is to lay it out in 

 grove form. 



Supposing that your fences lie at right angles with each 

 other, as they should do, this will not be a very difficult 

 matter ; measuring the distance you wish the first row to 

 be from a parallel fence, first at one end and then at the 

 other of the proposed line, stretch a rope (or wire pre- 

 ferred) from a stake driven down at the point of measure- 

 ment at one end and to its corresponding stake at the 

 other. Before this is done, however, tags at the desired 

 distance apart should have been tied to rope or wire in 

 such manner as to preclude their slipping out of place. 

 Now, keeping your measuring cord tight, drive down a 

 stake at each of these tags ; these mark the position of the 

 tap-root of the tree. Now, whatever space you have 

 chosen for your trees to set apart, as just staked out, 

 whether twenty, twenty-five, or thirty feet, measure this 

 distance at a right angle for your first row at each end, 

 remove your measuring line to these new points of depart- 



