8o Fruitgrowing under Irrigation 



Dry vegetable matter such as straw, grass, or dry 

 lucerne will repay the trouble for bringing on to the 

 land. 



This is especially the case with lucerne, which is 

 a legume and is rich in nitrogen. According to 

 recent American advices, many Californian fruit- 

 growers are now beginning to give up the growing 

 of cover crops among their trees, and are instead 

 reserving portions of their land for lucerne pad- 

 docks. The lucerne is cut before it begins to seed, 

 allowed to wilt or partly dry, and carted on to the 

 orchard. It is then either spread into furrows and 

 ploughed in or broad-casted, chaffed up with the 

 disc harrow, and then ploughed in. By this method 

 the drawbacks resulting from the growing of crops 

 among trees are avoided, clean cultivation can, if 

 need be, followed all the year through, and humus 

 and nitrogen are added to the soil. 



Vegetable Mould is also a most desirable ingre- 

 dient to bring on the orchard. Although difficult to 

 obtain in quantities in the old settled districts, it is 

 fairly plentiful w^here trees and shrubs are still 

 growing in their native state. Where horticultural 

 districts are surrounded by great tracts of forest and 

 scrub lands, such as is the case with the newly- 

 settled irrigation districts of the Murray Valley, 

 large desopits of vegetable mould may be found 

 under box, gum, and pine trees, as well as surround- 

 ing large mallee clumps ; and the writer has seen as 

 many as two dray loads of humus removed from a 

 single mallee clump. 



The profitable utilization of these deposits of 

 vegetable mould depends upon their distance from 

 the orchard, as the chief cost of getting this matter 

 on the land is the expense of cartage. Where the 

 cartage is half a mile this substance can be delivered 

 on the orchard for about ten shillings per ton. 



