TILLAGE OF OLIVE ORCHARDS. 



27 



during the harvest, which would be hard to pick up from plowed 

 ground. The basins also serve the important purpose of catching 

 and holding rain water around the bases of the trees during the win- 

 ter and spring. In one plantation visited by the writer there were 

 two short, shallow trenches, converging in V-shape, as shown in figure 

 6, on the uphill side of each tree, which serve to conduct the surface 

 water after rains to the basin around the tree. 



The suggestion was made to the writer by a French tenant on one 

 of the new olive orchards near Sfax that the rain which falls upon 

 the surface of the orchard could be better utilized if only'an area 

 around each tree corresponding in extent to that occupied by its 

 roots were cultivated, leaving a strip of smooth, unplowed ground 

 between each two neighboring trees. The water falling on the lat- 

 ter would run off the hard ground between into the cultivated areas 

 around the trees. As a result of the existing practice of keeping the 

 entire surface of the orchard cultivated, all the water is absorbed 

 where it falls, and in the middle of the spaces 

 between the trees, at least while the latter are 

 young, sinks into the ground without reaching 

 their roots. After the trees have reached their 

 full growth, however, it is probable that their 

 root systems occupy practically the entire area 

 of the orchard. 



Until the olive trees begin to bear a consider- 

 able quantity of fruit, i. e., usually until they 

 are about ten vears old, field crops are fre- FlG - 6.— Diagram nius- 



7 x trating" a method of 



quently grown among them, but after that time, conducting surface 

 and sometimes after the sixth year, all such ter ^to ttie base of 



crops are rigorously excluded. Barley is the 



crop that is most often grown in the young orchards, although wheat 

 and horse beans ( Vicia faba) are also grown. All these are fall- 

 sown crops. Wheat is a more uncertain crop than barley at Sfax 

 and is thought by the natives to draw more heavily on the scanty 

 supply of moisture in the soil. Even barley, though sown every 

 year, can be counted upon to give a good crop only once in three 

 years. In some orchards barley and horse beans are grown in 

 rotation. % 

 From the outset, however, strips of ground 10 to 12 feet wide, in 

 the center of which are the rows of trees, are left absolutely bare. 

 These are widened and the area devoted to small crops is propor- 

 tionately diminished each year until the olives begin to bear, when 

 the land is left entirely to the trees. 



a The same practice obtains also in western Algeria. See Trabut, L., L'Olivier, 

 Bui. 21, Serv. Bot. Gouvernm. Gen. de l'Algerie, 1900, p. 41. 

 125 



