V 



FIELD CULTURE 



131 



But, while the ideal treatment would be the digging 

 of a very large hole, there are practical limits, fixed 

 chiefly by the price of labour ; and it therefore rarely 

 happens that a planter digs holes of such size as most 

 writers recommend. It is also evident that in soft and 

 rich ground, the coco-nut can take care of itself with 

 comparatively little help. In actual practice, it is 

 probable that most coco-nuts when transplanted are set 

 into holes just large enough to receive them. Such 

 extreme economy of labour certainly does not pay. 

 There are probably no economic conditions in any place 

 such that it would not be worth while to open a hole at 

 least 35 centimetres wide and deep, even though the 

 cost of preparing these holes limits the number of trees 

 which can be planted. In soil which is light and rich, 

 it is probably not worth while to make the holes much 

 larger than this, and this is especially true if the space 

 between the coco-nuts is going to be used for catch-crops 

 which will keep the land in a state of tilth, but will not 

 rob the coco-nut of light. On heavy land, the holes 

 can profitably be made considerably larger, and the 

 same is true of sandy but poor soil, where a larger hole 

 should be prepared and filled with earth better than the 

 most of the surrounding or underlying soil. The figure 

 as recommended for practice in Ceylon is 90 centimetres 

 (3 feet) in each direction. Watt recommends that on 

 poor or heavy soil a hole should be 90 to 180 centi- 

 metres in diameter, and 70 centimetres deep. Simmonds 

 goes to the extreme, recommending that on level ground 

 the holes should be 135 centimetres in each diameter, 

 and that on slopes they be made from 180 to 225 

 centimetres across. 1 



Unless there are conditions such as the necessity of 

 transplanting seedlings before they become too large, or 

 of getting the coco-nuts into place before brush can 

 grow up, or before the presence of catch-crops would 



1 Tropical Agriculture, p. 224 : "In a level, loose soil, the hole should be a 

 cube, of a yard and a half, on hill-sides 2 to 2J yards, but in low grounds half or 

 three-quarters of a yard deep with one yard square is sufficient." 



