Soils and Fertilizers for Pecans 77 



during flood stages of the stream, and are capable of sup- 

 porting a great variety of plants not at all aquatic in nature. 

 The occasional flood waters are really beneficial rather than 

 detrimental to pecan trees, since they bring doAvn rich deposits 

 of soil which furnish great abundance of readily available 

 plant-food after the flood waters subside. The pecan is fitted 

 by nature, with its strong sturdy trunk and limbs of great 

 elasticity, to resist the flood waters of swollen streams, but 

 cannot endure the still stagnant seep of a marshy soil. "Where 

 the willow and gum-tree are at their best, the pecan tree is 

 out of place. Land too wet and sour for the production of 

 general farm crops should not be planted to pecan trees. 



Cut-over lands from which the merchantable timber has 

 been removed should be cleared of the younger trees and of 

 as many stumps as possible and cultivated to some annual 

 farm crop for at least two years before being planted to pecan 

 trees. It is very expensive to remove all the stumps when 

 the land is first cleared. It is more economical to grow some 

 cleanly cultivated crop and to allow the smaller stumps to 

 decay. As long as decaying roots and stumps remain in the 

 soil, wood-lice will be harbored in them and attack the young 

 pecan trees.^ Furthermore, newly cleared land is likely to 

 contain too much acidity or sourness for satisfactory growth 

 of young pecan trees. The growing of corn and cowpeas or 

 velvet beans and fairly clean cultivation for about two years, 

 provided the land is well drained, will reduce the acidity 

 sufficiently to start a pecan orchard. A quicker reduction 

 of the acidity would, of course, be effected by liming the soil. 

 The yields of farm crops on land the first year after reclaim- 

 ing from the forest are usually small ; but by the second year 



^ See Chapter XI. 



