1906 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



303 



winter time, is nature's prompting, and that 

 these things are really beneficial, and, may 

 be, ward off the necessity for drugs and 

 doctors. 



The best ground for this business is gen- 

 erally covered with a dense growth of trees 

 and underbrush, and that makes it expensive 

 to clear off. One man told us that, to make 

 new land, absolutely clean of stumps and 

 every thing, all at once, costs just about 

 $100 per acre. The usual plan seems to be, 

 3 rows of lettuce, about 18 in. apart, then a 

 two-foot alley. This alley is to give room in 

 planting and gathering the crop, and a horse 

 is also used in cultivating in the alley some- 

 times. Hand cultivators or plows are run in 

 the eighteen-inch spaces. Chemical fertiliz- 

 ers are mainly used, as I suppose stable 

 manure is not to be had. One man makes 

 a shallow furrow between the rows; a sec- 

 ond strews in the fertilizer by hand; and a 

 third, with the right kind of hand cultivator, 

 mixes the fertilizer thoroughly with the soil. 

 This past winter has taught pretty well the 

 importance of surface and open- ditch drain- 

 age. Few if any tiles are used; but as there 

 is no frost here to make the sides cave in, 

 the ditches are sliced down with a spade, 

 with very little slope. When weeds are al- 

 lowed to go to seed it is, of course, quite an 

 expense to keep all the open ditches " open " 

 at all times and seasons. Close cropping is 

 followed when the fertilizers are so expen- 

 sive. As an illustration, one man remarked 

 a crop of lettuce was cleaned from a field 

 we were passing through, the day before. I 

 stopped in astonishment, and exclaimed, 

 "Why, my good friend! you surely don't 

 mean from this nice field of wax beans? " 

 "Yes, sir. These beans were planted be- 

 tween the rows of lettuce; and after the 

 lettuce was off and trash cleaned up we ran 

 the cultivator through, and the beans just 

 spread out during the last night so they now 

 cover the ground pretty well, as you see." 



To work on this " high- pressure " plana 

 ton of fertilizer (costing $30.00) is often 

 used on a single crop. 



Florida cabbage is also away up, owing, 

 we were told, to the fact that the cabbage 

 crop in the North last fall was unusually 

 short. Here in Florida I am told it is no 

 unusual thing at certain seasons to have a 

 5-lb. cabbage sell for as much as a 5-lb. pine- 

 apple. Well, I can say from experience that 

 a nice hard crisp Jersey Wakefield cabbage 

 grown here in Florida is about as nice as a 



{)ineapple. We saw fields of cabbage so 

 arge they almost went away off "out of 

 sight." Cabbage can be grown here only 

 in winter. This truck-farming can not be 

 well carried on very far away from the rail- 

 road and steamboat lines; and good roads to 

 the ship ping- points are almost as necessary. 

 Although much time and money had been 

 spent on the roads, we found them in some 

 places pretty bad; but this was on account 

 of the unusual winter rains. The ditches 

 for drainage are usually along the roadsides, 

 and sometimes these are very deep— ten feet 

 or more, making it expensive for bridges to 



get into the fields. Of course, a rotation of 

 crops is desirable, and they are just finding 

 out that oranges and other citrus fruits oft- 

 en do well on this ground so good for the 

 truck business. 



Now, please don't think I am blundering 

 when I tell you we drove through a grape- 

 fruit orchard of 220 acres — 23, 000 trees in 

 all. Although 170,000 boxes of fruit have 

 been gathered and sold, there is some to be 

 picked yet. Of course, this great orchard 

 cost a lot of money. I think the trees are 

 now about eight years old; and although the 

 crops afford a fair interest on the outlay, the 

 owners have not as yet received what it cost 

 them; but the prospect is fair that they 

 soon will. A lemon- orchard we visited later 

 has a still larger acreage. 



Now I have a strange story to tell you. 

 It illustrates how possible it is in this world 

 of ours to find that, through God's wisdom 

 and providence, our enemies may prove 

 eventually to be our best friends in disguise. 

 Most of you have heard of the ivhite fly that 

 ruins orange-orchards and other stuff almost 

 the world over. Of late it has been getting 

 into greenhouses in the North, and, unlike 

 the "greenfly," tobacco fumes and stems 

 do not seem to trouble it. Well, greenhouse 

 men and gardeners have also been troubled 

 during damp weather with snails, and there 

 has been much talk in our florists' journals 

 as to how to get rid of them. One writer 

 said the best or only way was to hand-pick 

 them at night, with a lantern— they work 

 only at night. In some countries, we are 

 told, snails are such choice delicacies _for 

 Jood they are worth their weight in gold. 

 Well, various birds also consider them choice 

 morsels, and this is why the poor snails dare 

 not venture out by daylight. Now let us go 

 back to the white fly. 



This insect does not eat the orange leaves 

 to do any particular harm, but, like all the 

 family of aphides, it exudes, when feeding, 

 a sweet substance called by bee-keepers 

 honey-dew. This sticky stuff covers the 

 orange- leaves so they can not breathe, and 

 finally gives sustenance to a black tarry- 

 looking fungus that coats the leaves and 

 injures if not kills the tree. Well, Mr. F. 

 D. Waite and one other good man whose 

 name I have lost discovered, about simulta- 

 neously, that a Florida snail, if given a 

 chance, would go all over an orange-tree 

 and lick the leaves and branches all off clean 

 of this sooty mold or fungus. All you need 

 to do to "pass them round" is to throw a 

 piece of burlap or phosphate- sack across the 

 limbs or crotch of the tree. The snails can 

 hide under this cover during the day, so the 

 birds can not get them, and here they mul- 

 tiply prodigiously. We saw them by the 

 dozens and hundreds clinging to the orange- 

 limbs. They, with their shells, are about 

 the size of beans. You can pull them from 

 one tree and carry them to another, where 

 they will stay if you give them a sack cov- 

 ering for protection. In fact, they will of 

 themselves go from tree to tree if they can 

 find the shelter from the birds and other 



