S^ILS ADAPTED TO THIS LYCHKK AND LHXC AX 59 



Plantations 



The raised-bd system of orchard planting, so frequently 

 employed in the Canton delta, seems especially adapted to the lychee 

 and a very large acreage of lychee is thus grown. This system could 

 doubtless be employed to advantage in some of the swampy areas of 

 the United States which now lie waste. In Kwangtung wide, open 

 ditches, at a distance of thirty to forty feet apart, are dug through land 

 which is low and subject co flood or to submersion at high tide. 

 These ditches are ten to fifteen wide, when the excavated earth is 

 thrown up on the other side, the surface of the beds are 10-15 feet 

 above the bottom of the channel, which drains out freely when the 

 tide is low. The lychee trees are planted more or less irregularly 

 along either side of these beds so that the limbs of the trees, when 

 mature, stretch across these channels and meet in the center (fig. 

 .40). Lychee are often intercropped with guava or orange where 

 this system is used. The conditions secured by this raised-bed meth- 

 od seem ideal for lychee culture and vast areas of otherwise useless 

 land are thus made profitable. When one looks down from a high 

 vantage point over an area such as this, he might think he was look- 

 ing down upon a vast apple orchard (fig. 31), but let him try to enter 



and he soon becomes lost in the net work of beds and streams. 







Upland Lychce Orchards 



Upland lychee orchards, though perhaps not so common in 

 Kwangtun-j; as low-land, are nevertheless common is hilly countries 

 like Lo Kang (Lo Kong HfSSj) and Tseng Ch'ing (Tsang Shing 

 ift7$). In the upland culture of lychee the trees are sometimes scat- 

 tered irregularly over the hills and intercropped with other fruits; but 

 sometimes they are planted in regular orchard formation with at least 

 thirty feet between the trees and with very little tillage after they be- 

 come mature. Orchards of lychee thus planted are not unlike apple 

 orchards in general appearance (fig. 25). 



Artificial irrigation is not necessary in these upland groves of 

 Kwangtung but would doubtless prove profitable in regions with less 

 rainfall and humidity. When the trees are grown under these higher 

 conditions the soil is usually a sandy loam with clay subsoil. 

 The abundant rainfall during the fruiting season provides sufficient 

 moisture to bring the tree to a profitable fruiting condition. But in 

 any country where this moisture is lacking during the growing season 

 liberal irrigation should be practiced, and what might usually be con- 

 sidered an excess water supply may be provided with profit. 



