32 



THE ORANGE; 



GENERAL REQUIREMENTS. The re- 

 quirements of a nursery may be generally 

 stated as follows: 



1. Accessibility and convenience to 

 market. 



2. A rich, mellow soil. 



3. A warm situation. 



4. Abundance of water. 



5. Convenient irrigation. 



SOIL. Provided the elements of strength 

 are there, the looser and more friable the 

 soil the better the trees will flourish. 

 Any ground that bakes hard should be 

 avoided. Do not plant your nursery on 

 adobe land. Trees cannot flourish with 

 their roots in vulcanized casings. But, in 

 avoiding the extreme of stiff soils, do not 

 run to the other extreme of too sandy 

 ground. A certain proportion of humus 

 and some tenacity in the soil are necessary 

 to retain moisture and to give the trees <\ 

 good footing. Then, too, bear in mind 

 that, by and by, when it comes to taking 

 up, the trees, you may want to ball the 

 roots. This you cannot do unless the 

 earth has a good deal of coherence. Ball- 

 ing is not a sine qua non, as will be ex- 

 plained subsequently, and I would not 

 advise the abandonment of a generally 

 good location for the single objection that 

 the ground is too loose to ball. The choco- 

 late-colored clayey sands or sandy clays, 

 which abound in our foothills, are the 

 happy medium of a nursery soil, being 

 stiff enough to ball, but not inclined to 

 bake, if fairly cultivated. 



WELL DRAINED. It is necessary that 

 the ground for a nursery should be well 

 drained; i. e., there should be no standing 

 water close to the surface, rendering the 

 soil cold and sodden. 



TOPOGRAPHY. Opinions are divided as 

 to the comparative advantages of a level 

 piece of ground or one with a gentle slope 

 to the southward. The sloping land has 

 the warmer exposure and is likely to be 

 better drained. The level land is more 

 convenient for irrigation. But whether 

 the ground be flat or sloping, before the 

 trees are planted it should be graded to as 

 near a perfect plane as possible. Leave 

 no basins or hummocks anywhere; they 

 won't do, as you will find at your cost if 

 you attempt to run water over them, 

 through them or around them. Your 



graded plane may have a uniform pitch of 

 a foot in one hundred in the direction you 

 intend to irrigate; half a foot would be 

 better in most localities. If the nursery 

 site is on a hillside sloping to the south r 

 make the pitch for the purposes of irriga- 

 tion east or west. You cannot, with ad- 

 vantage, run water down any considera- 

 ble slope. 



PREPARATION OF THE SOIL. The 

 ground having been graded, it should be 

 double-plowed and harrowed. This, if it 

 be the kind here recommended, will re- 

 duce the soil to the requisite tilth. If not 

 perfectly pulveri/ed with this treatment, 

 it should be reduced still further with har- 

 row or clod-crusher; but the better plan 

 would be to pick out some other locality 

 for your nursery. 



ARRANGEMENT OF THK NURSERY. 

 When a nursery is planted on level 

 ground, it is considered advisable to run 

 the rows north and south, in order that 

 the sun may have the greatest play upon 

 the ground. On a southern slope the rows 

 should be east and west, the matter of 

 irrigation there assuming paramount im- 

 portance. Located on more broken or 

 irregular ground say a series of knolls 

 or hillsides the contour system is adopt- 

 ed, running the rows in curves and re- 

 flexes keeping always at a certain level 

 practicable for leading water along the 

 rows. The greatest objection to this sys- 

 tem is that it makes cultivation difficult, 

 .sometimes precluding the use of horse 

 power altogether. 



ROOM FOR ACCESS AND WORKING. If 

 your nursery is a large one, divide it into 

 tablones, with drive-ways between and 

 the rows not more than one hundred and 

 fifty feet long. This gives convenient ac- 

 cess to all parts of the nursery, and you 

 do not have to carry the trees a great dis- 

 tance in loading them into a wagon. It 

 also allows space for turning, in cultiva- 

 tion. 



LAYING OFF THK GROUND. The estab- 

 lished way of planting nursery is in square 

 or parallelogram form, with rows four 

 feet apart and trees a foot apart in the 

 rows. This gives 10,800 trees to the acre. 

 The operation of laying oft* is very simple. 

 The outlines of the nursery or of the tab- 

 lone being established, stick stakes along 



