21 

 CHAPTER V. 



PLANTING THE ORANGE SEED. 



In selecting seed for the nursery, if you intend budding the young 

 trees, you need not be careful as to the quality of fruit from which the 

 seed is taken. The plant from the sour seed, as already stated will, for 

 Si few years, grow more rapidly but make a smaller tree than the plant 

 from the sweet fruit. 



If you desire to grow your trees without budding select only from 

 the best fruit, and from trees not grown in the vicinity of any trees 

 bearing sour or indifferent fruit. All the varieties and even species of 

 the citrus family mix very readily, and if grown in close proximity 

 seeds from the same tree will give an endless variety of fruits, the ten- 

 dency however being towards the kind produced by the tree from 

 which the fruit is plucked, as the pistils are more apt to be fertilized 

 by pollen from flowers near at hand. 



If sour seed are to be planted the fruit may be thrown into piles 

 till rotted and the seed washed out from the pulp. But whatever kind 

 is used do not allow the seed to dry. Put them at once into moist 

 sand, to be kept till ready for planting. 



The seeds may be planted either in boxes or in the open ground 

 or under glass as quantity or other circumstances may suggest. If 

 iruit is eaten in the early winter the seed may at once be planted in 

 boxes and the boxes set in some warm place indoors and the plants be 

 so far advanced as to be ready to set in the nursery early in the Spring. 



In preparing beds or boxes for seed have the bottom soil covered 

 two or three inches deep with fresh leaf mold from the hummock. 

 Place the seeds about one inch apart and cover with half an inch of 

 soil leaf mold. Finish by a covering of one inch of mulching and 

 .thorough watering. Keep the soil moist, but not wet. If the seed 

 bed is in the open ground it is well to hold the mulching in place by 

 laying a few brush on the bed. 



I have sometimes succeeded very well by allowing the seed to 

 remain in a box of sand till they have started to sprout and then plant- 

 ing them directly in the nursery. In this case select a place partially 



