SOILS ADA1TKI) TO TIIK LYCHKF. AND LUX'IAN 



/'V rtilization 



The Chinese maintain the quality of the fruit is very largely 

 dependent upon carefully feeding the plants and this is wisely done 

 from the time the young trees begin to make their first growth. 

 Careful yearly nourishment of the fruiting wood is provided. The 

 tree is naturally a surface feeder (fig. 4) and when grown under 

 raised-bed and dyke conditions this characteristic is greatly encourag- 

 ed by pouring liquid fertilizer, usually night soil, into little shallow 

 holes or furrows dug about the tree at a distance not greater than six 

 or eight feet from the trunk (fig. 32). This is usually done in 

 early spring and each mature tree in bearing is given no less than 

 five hundred pounds of this very concentrated liquid manure. On 

 narrow dykes it is poured into holes dug along the center of the 

 dyke so as to assure a minimum loss from seepage (fig. 33). 



This night soil is transported in boats built for the purpose, 

 which enter the streams and canals and greatly facilitate the work of 

 manuring (fig. 34). No Cantonese could be termed a farmer unless 

 able to shoulder two buckets of water or fertilizer, one swung from 

 either end of a bamboo pole which balances across the shoulder as he 

 gracefully trots to and from the fields. The work of fertilizing is 

 facilitated by a wooden dipper attached to one end of this bamboo 

 pole (fig. 34). When the boats reach the dykes the liquid manure 

 is poured, by means of this dipper, into wooden buckets provided 

 for the purpose (fig. 40) and carried to the trees. 



Mulching 



The lychee should profit greatly by mulching, though the 

 Chinese do not seem to practice it to any great extent. But they are 

 exceedingly careful in the wet culture of the tree almost every year 

 to cover any exposed roots with a smear of canal mud. In the 

 colder districts they often bank the trunk and roots with this mud, 

 mixed with manure, and thus both protect the tree in the winter 

 and prepare for the coming months of spring when plant food will 

 be necessary. Tang Tao Hsieh (fj^IBi) 1 in his treatise on the 

 lychee reports that it is this custom, practiced by the farmers of 

 Fang Kang (Fung Kong HUM]), Fukien, that has made the lychee of 

 that place the most superior. 



1 TANG TAO HSIEH (fJJst^,), Li Chih P'u ($&) in Ku Chin Tu 

 Shu Chi Cheng (tf^WMUft), Po WuHui Pien (t$4&gfg), Ts'ao Muh Tien 

 section 21-1 (fczHT-fc-HW), /-> '.'///// /'// 2 



