142 



Garden and Forest. 



[March 20, iS 



were added to the approved lists. The Lucretia Dewberry 

 and the Early Harvest Blackberry were recommended for 

 the southern states. 



The Wilder medals were all awarded to Florida exhibi- 

 tors at the Exposition in Ocala. The Lake County Ship- 

 pers' Union, Marion County, Sumpter County, Lee County, 

 Rev. Lyman Phelps, E. C. Hart and D. W. Adams each 

 received a silver medal, while Citrus County, Polk County, 

 Volusia County, O. P. Rooks and E. S. Hubbard each re- 

 ceived a bronze medal. The county exhibits thus honored 

 were collections of fruits and other products growing in 

 each. The taste displayed in the arrangement of these 

 exhibits, as well as the variety and value of material 

 showed, plainly justified the unusual course of bestowing 

 a prize upon a county instead of upon an individual 

 exhibitor. 



METHODS OF ORANGE CULTURE. 



An essay on this subject, by the Honorable C. F. A. Bielby, 

 gave complete instructions for growing oranges, beginning 

 with the clearing of the land. This is an important matter, 

 for vast tracts capable of yielding the best of oranges are 

 still covered with forest growth, and Mr. Bielby described the 

 approved methods for clearing each variety of land, namely : 

 (i) The gray hummock, so-called, with its heavy timber of Live 

 Oak, Hickory and Bay ; (2) the black hummock or low level 

 of dark mould covered with an almost impenetrable growth of 

 hardwood and undershrubs ; (3) the high Pine-land, a rolling 

 country often from thirty to sixty feet above water, covered 

 with stately Pines ; (4) the medium Pine-land, level and from 

 four to six feet above water, with trees as large but hardly 

 as tall ; (5) the iiatwoods or low Pine-lands. On all these soils, 

 which can again be divided accoi'ding to the various sub- 

 soils, whether of sand, limestone, clay or coquina, the 

 Oi-ange will thrive, and as the grove-owner on each variety of 

 soil is suited with his own, this proves that the advantages 

 and disadvantages of each are quite evenly divided. To 

 chop, pile and burn the growth on gray hummock, to grub 

 the roots and burn again would cost from $75 to $ioo per 

 acre, while the burning would work a ruin to the soil from 

 which it would not recover. To clear away the underbrush, 

 pile it in windrows twenty-five feet apart together with the 

 trees less than three inches in diameter ; to cut the standing 

 timber and lay it along the wind-rows ; to grub a strip eight 

 feet wide between the rows; to work this with the plow, and set 

 the trees in well-dug holes, four feet in diameter and fifteen 

 feet apart will cost $35 an acre. If the timber is left standing 

 between the windrows and deadened, and if four-feet holes 

 are dug fifteen feet apart, as before, the cost of clearing and 

 planting will be $20 an acre, and although the dying branches 

 will begin to fall the second year, and some of the Oaks 

 themselves will soon follow, little damage will be done in this 

 way, and the shade will be a help to the young Orange-trees. 



The black hummock is usually wet, and needs surface 

 drainage. All the undergrowth, with the smaller trees and 

 some of the large timber, should be cut, and all can be 

 burned with little injury to the soil. Much of the timber should 

 be left standing to be thinned out as the Orange-trees occupy 

 the ground. The trees should be set on mounds, or better 

 on ridges twenty-five feet apart and running parallel with 

 the drainage. To clear this land costs $165 an acre, and 

 although the water is at the very surface, the Orange-tree 

 flourishes on this deep soil producing bright, thin-skinned 

 and heavy fruit. In the Pine-lands the cheapest way is to 

 deaden the timber by girdling. The flatlands have been 

 considered of little value, and even now in fairly accessible 

 localities they can be bought for from one to five dollars an 

 acre and the clearing will cost but five dollars more. On these 

 low, wet Pine-lands Mr. Bielby once found a tree of enor- 

 mous size from which 8,000 oranges had been taken in a sin- 

 gle crop. None of the soil in these Pine-lands can be 

 called good, but since moisture is the most important factor 

 in orange-growing, an open sub-soil under little hills and val- 

 leys is the worst, while level Pine-lands with a clay subsoil is 

 the most promising. Upon these Pine-lands, as knowledge 

 of fertilizers and of methods of cultivation has grown, the 

 greatest advance in Orange-culture has been made within the 

 past few years. 



In the northern part of the state varieties which ripen in 

 October and November are to be preferred, so that the danger 

 of freezing may be avoided. From Lake George down to lati- 

 tude 28° 30' December is a safe market month, while south of 

 this, as in the Indian River country, where fruit hangs on the 

 tree sound and sweet fill March and April, the latest and finest 



fruit can be grown with safety and profit. Orange-trees should 

 be set high, with their crown-roots showing well above the 

 ground. The supply of moisture determines the inethod of 

 cultivation. Where soil is light and dry the harrow should be 

 used every ten days from February to November to keep the 

 weeds from using the water which the trees need, and to con- 

 serve the supply of moisture in the ground by checking 

 evaporation at the surface. For soils of darker color and 

 finer texture, with underlying clay or yellow sand, the better 

 method is to keep the soil stirred about the roots as far as the 

 trees throw partial shade, and allow some growth of Crab-grass 

 or the like on the remainder of the grove, not to be turned 

 under while green, but to die down in autumn on the surface. 

 In the black hummock and flatwoods the hoe should be used 

 alone, but the flatwoods may be haiTowed in dry years. The 

 effort should be to preserve the moisture where there is just 

 enough, and to use up the surplus where there is too much. 

 With abundant moisture, the question of fertilizers is not so 

 difficult, but it is always a serious one. On the alluvial hum- 

 mock over marl, groves that have been bearing fifteen years 

 without any fertilizers show no deterioration in brightness, 

 sweetness, fineness of texture or weight of the crop, and for 

 such soils the evil days seem yet far in the future. The gray 

 hummock soil over clay and limestone will make trees five or 

 six years old, but to trespass further upon the native fertility of 

 the soil is to invite catastrophe. After this period groves on 

 the gray hunrmock, and on the Pine-lands from the outset, 

 fertilizers should be used. Caution in the use of nitrogenous 

 material should always be exercised, but potash in the torm of 

 pure sulphate is invariably good, while phosphoric acid in 

 ground bone, and lime in gypsum, are usually profitable ap- 

 plications. The above is but the skeleton of a part of Mr. 

 Bielby's admirable paper, which included a discussion of the 

 diseases and insect pests to which the Orange is subject. It 

 was written in so clear a style and out of such fullness of ex- 

 perience and knowledge that all who heard it will watch with 

 interest for the appearance of that Manual of Orange-culture 

 which Mr. Bielby ought to prepare. 



THE KAKI, OR JAPAN PERSIMMON. 

 After many unsuccessful attempts to introduce this fruit in 

 the higher latitudes of the United States, Mr. P. J. Beckmans 

 and the late A. J. Bidwell succeeded in establishing it in 

 Georgia and Florida. Mr. B. F. Livingston, whose paper 

 treated of this fruit, stated that no fruit tree in Florida grows as 

 thriftily and vigorously and with so little manure and cultivation 

 as the Kaki, especially when grafted or budded on the wild 

 native Persimmon. This stock, however, is best grown from 

 seed, as the old-field root-sprouts are barren and predisposed 

 to atta'cks from a beetle, whose larvae cut into the heart of the 

 tree, and down through the pith into the large roots. Mr. 

 Livingston's trees, grafted in February, 1888, on one-year-old 

 seedlings, now average six feet high, exceptional specimens 

 being eight feet high and two inches in diameter above the 

 stalk. Trees should not be allowed to bear when too young, 

 for they are very precocious, and February grafts sometimes 

 set fruit in nursery rows the next summer. With no other 

 fertilizer than swamp muck, specimens of the fruit weighing 

 more than a pound have been produced, and the trees do well 

 on all the kinds of Florida soil, from wet bottom land to high 

 and dry soils. The fruit differs remarkably in size, color, 

 flavor, texture and adaptability to varied uses. There is much 

 confusion of nomenclature, but they can be grouped into fam- 

 ilies, each one having certain comnron characteristics, which 

 were described by Mr. Livingston. His concluding advice was 

 to select only well-established and identified varieties, as pro- 

 miscuous planting would be sure to include many-indifferent 

 and almost worthless kinds. 



Periodical Literature. 



From a recent issue of the Scientific American we repro- 

 duce the following interesting information in regard to the 

 manufacture of " Wood Cloth : " 



Mitscherlich has applied the bisulphite process for reducing 

 wood to the production of a fibre from wood which can be 

 spun. 



Thin boards or laths free from knots, but of any desired 

 width, are cut into strips in the direction parallel with the 

 grain, and are then boiled in a boiler containing a solution of 

 sulphurous acid or bisulphite. This boiling effects disintegra- 

 tion without requiring that the strips of boards shall be re- 

 duced to very small pieces. After boiling the wood, it is dried 

 in the open air or in specially constructed drying rooms. By 

 thus drying the product, the fibre, which is originally very 



