HOW TO CULTIVATE. 77 



The orange will bear a great deal of harsh treatment and 

 neglect without actually dying, but it will not thrive nor 

 come quickly into profit, unless it is carefully tended and 

 nurtured, just as one would look after any other business 

 that he expected to be profitable, or to become his future 

 support. 



But, as we have just said, how best to accomplish this 

 desirable result is a much vexed question, for the calling, 

 being a comparatively new one, there are almost as many 

 systems put forward as there are orange growers, and be- 

 tween them all the new-comer can not but become bewil- 

 dered and confused. A great deal may be learned by com- 

 paring methods and results in one's own neighborhood, 

 finding out who has failed and who has succeeded, and the 

 cause which led to each result, and then guiding one's own 

 course accordingly. 



The advocates of plowing, once a numerous body, are 

 becoming fewer and fewer as time proves that there is no 

 tree or plant that will respond more generously than the 

 orange to proper cultivation, which is not with the plow. 



"Let the weeds and grass grow in the grove and plow 

 them under two or three times in the course of the season," 

 used to be the text preached to the novice, and practiced 

 by the old-system growers. This is the plan still followed 

 by some, but the majority have come to the belief that the 

 plow should not be allowed at all in a grove that is bearing 

 or nearly approaching it, for by this time the ground will 

 be closely matted with roots thrown out by the trees, and 

 as the majority of these are surface roots, the plow will 

 tear and loosen them, and thus, by the old method, " two 

 or three times in a season " the trees were rudely deprived 

 of a portion of their food caterers, and their growth 

 checked while Dame Nature paused to replace the fibrous 

 roots thus torn away. 



