SUPERIORITY OF BUDDED TREES. 21 



As the trees grow older and begin to fruit heavily, increase the 

 percentage of potash and phosphoric acid. Apply the fertilizer in 

 two or three doses during the growing season. The time of applying 

 must be determined by the particular orchard under consideration; 

 ordinarity an application should not be made during December or Jan- 

 uary, as it would be likely to force an early spring growth or even 

 cause a vigorous winter growth, which should be avoided. 



If the trees be put into a dormant or semidormant condition during 

 December and January, they will make a strong spring growth and 

 produce a heavy crop of bloom. If the bloom is retarded as long as 

 possible the blooming period will be shortened, and consequently the 

 fruit will mature more nearly at one time, thus doing away with the 

 necessity of making several pickings from the same tree. 



Trees that have been neglected do not prove productive unless they 

 happen to be standing on some place where a large quantity of organic 

 matter has accumulated. Trees on abandoned homesteads located in 

 the piney woods soon become unproductive and require two or three 

 years' nursing to bring them back to good growth and bearing. It 

 usually pays better to start in with good, fresh trees from the nursery 

 than to attempt to " bring out" an abandoned orchard. 



SUPERIORITY OF BUDDED TREES. 



The earlier productiveness of orchards composed of budded and 

 grafted trees has been repeatedly demonstrated with most of the tree 

 fruits that are grown under cultivation. While occasional seedling 

 trees of most species bear at as early an age as the ordinary budded or 

 grafted tree of the same species, the trees in a seedling orchard 

 usually vary greatly in this particular, and on the average come into 

 bearing much later than budded or grafted orchards of varieties of 

 the same types of fruits grown under similar conditions. While many 

 factors are concerned in producing this result, the greatest advantage 

 of budding and grafting is that varieties of known precocity and 

 productiveness, as well as other desirable characteristics, can be per- 

 petuated with little variation, while the seedling orchard contains indi- 

 viduals differing widely in some or all of these important particulars 



Seedling avocados usually do not fruit until they are four or more, 

 years old, and they are usually six years old before bearing a crop. 

 There are exceptions to this, but the number of seedlings that bear a 

 good crop before they are six years old will not amount to 10 per 

 cent. 



VARIATION OF FRUIT FROM SEEDLING TREES. 



The sj^stematic work of propagating and cultivating avocados is just 

 beginning. The fruit being of American origin, it has come into cul- 

 tivation rather recently, and has not had the benefit of centuries of 



