44 THE NATURE AND CULTIVATION OF COFFEE. 



and if it has been trenched once before, as here advised, 

 and the rain and air thus allowed to penetrate, the 

 second trenching will be scarcely more expensive than 

 weeding. Subsequent operations will consist in trench- 

 ing over the whole of the land, burying all weeds, 

 pruning, etc., once every year, a process which will 

 frequently obviate the necessity for manure, and will 

 materially lesson the labour of weeding. 



It will doubtless occur to the practical agriculturist 

 to time the annual trenching so as to bury a crop of 

 growing weeds in the operation, and thus save one 

 weeding, and at the same time enrich the soil. The 

 months of May and June will be found the best for this 

 work, or at the close of the rains in October and 

 November, care must of course be taken to have 

 efficient drains across the water shed, to prevent the 

 soil when thus loosened, being carried away by the 

 heavy rains. The practice of irrigation, wherever it 

 can be followed, is not of less importance than that 

 already advocated of trenching. On many estates there 

 exists ample facility for its adoption, in the streams 

 usually abundant in the mountain regions where coffee 

 is generally cultivated, and its excellent effects will 

 soon be visible in the assistance afforded to the plants 

 in withstanding every drought, and in maturing heavy 

 crops of fruit, which would not otherwise be brought 

 to perfection. As a rule it will increase the productive 

 qualities of estates twenty-five per cent, but in many 

 low hot localities it will produce heavy crops, where 

 otherwise, little or none could be obtained, as has been 

 the case in the far-famed old Eajawelle Estate, in 

 Ceylon. 



