11 



if properly managed will not only shade the ground around the young 

 coconuts, but will ventilate and enrich the soil, prevent fires, and, when 

 necessaiy, furnish a moderate supply of salable firewood. 



The cleaned area around the base of the tree for the first four or five 

 years should be at least equal in diameter to the length of the longest 

 leaf; if the soil is heavy and inclined to "pack" in the rainy season or 

 to crack in dry weather, it should be loosened up around the trees by 

 the vertical forking method or by a strong steel-toothed rake; spading 

 or ordinary forking would break too many roots of the plant. 



If no secondary crops are grown between the rows of coconuts, the 

 disk harrow is a very good implement for keeping down the weeds and 

 grass. Shallow plowing between the trees is in some cases advisable, but 

 there is some danger of injuring the roots of the palms; the plow should 

 never pass nearer than 1.5 meters to the base of the tree. 



During the diy season in all soils and during all times in very sandy 

 soils the young plants should be mulched either with a live legume cover 

 crop or with some kind of straw, grass, or chopped-up coconut leaves; 

 the purpose of this blanket is to keep the sun from overheating the 

 soil surface (which would check the root growth) and to prevent ex- 

 cessive evaporation from the otherwise bare ground. It should be borne 

 in mind that even apparently slight influences upon the vigor of the 

 young roots really amount to serious losses through retarding the time 

 of profitable yield, diminishing the productiveness, and shortening the 

 life of the tree. 



It is questionable whether the fallen leaves in a plantation should 

 ever be burned; in case of any fungus disease appearing on the older 

 leaves, or in case the ground is too hard to permit "trenching," it would 

 be advisable, perhaps. But, ordinarily, the fallen leaves should be col- 

 lected every few months and "stripped;" i. e., the leaflets cut off by 

 running a bolo down each side of the midrib, then the midribs should 

 be buried in a shallow trench so that being slightly covered with earth 

 they will quickly decay to form humus without danger of furnishing a 

 breeding place for small beetles which might spread to the living trees. 

 (Small trunk-boring beetles do exist in live coconuts in the Philip- 

 pines as well as in most other coconut countries.) The trenches should 

 be only as long as the midribs; they may be made in the middle of the 

 interspace between the trees, taking care that successive trenches do not 

 cross each other before the material has rotted. 



The coconut being a shallow-rooting tree having no taproot whatever, 

 it is possible to grow this crop in soil but 60 to 80 centimeters above 

 the water-table even in plantations where high tides occasionally bring 

 salt water to within 30 centimeters or so of the surface of the adjacent 

 ground. Although coconuts are killed by salt water covering the "feed- 

 ing area," as well as by stagnant fresh water over their roots, they may 



