. 13 



Continue this until the sweet bud has so far advanced as to be able to 

 furnish the tree with sufficient leaf to enable it to collect sufficient 

 carbon from the atmosphere to insure the health of the tree. After this 

 point has been reached you may then pluck off all the sour shoots and 

 keep them off. In some instances where a sweet bud has made an 

 early start, a more vigorous growth of the sweet bud may be obtained 

 by plucking off all the sour shoots from the first, but this is at the risk 

 of the health of both the stock and the bud. I will mention one 

 other thing in this connection : do not allow the sweet bud to grow too 

 long before pinching it back. If allowed to grow two or three feet, as 

 it will from a very vigorous stump, it is liable to be broken off by the 

 wind. But even if it should be securely tied so as to prevent such an 

 accident it should, nevertheless, be pinched back in order to hasten the 

 maturity of its own wood and leaves. The mature leaves are neces- 

 sary to the health of both stock and bud, and necessary to gain a 

 controlling influence over the circulation, and to draw it as early as 

 possible to the sweet bud. By this means also the mature wood of the 

 sweet bud is better enabled to resist the blighting influence of both sun 

 and frost. Still another advantage is gained. By pinching back the 

 bud it is induced to branch near its junction with the stock and so 

 enlarge and strengthen its connection with the stock. 



I again call the attention of the reader to the other mistake men- 

 tioned in the beginnig of this chapter and so frequently made by those 

 who have undertaken to improve wild groves. Nature has not only 

 planted these groves, found above the frost line, on the south side of 

 bodies of water, but has also taken the additional precaution to plant 

 them under the protection of forest trees. Thus, doubly guarded, 

 these orange trees have grown, some of them probably for a century 

 As the cold winds from the north-west have swept down upon them, 

 the frost has been tempered by passing over a body of water of higher 

 temperature than the winds. The spreading branches of forest trees, 

 hanging like canopies, have checked the radiation of heat passing from 

 the surface of the earth, and enclosed the orange grove in a vapor 

 bath. And even if the tempest has been too strong and cold, and 

 swept away the warm air blanket thrown by nature over the tender 

 orange shoot, and the cold has frozen the sap until the tender woody 



