Edible Products. 



446 



|_May 1908. 



A convenient place protected from the 

 prevailing winds by a fence, a wind- 

 break, or by the side of a house should 

 be selected, and covered with a frame 

 about 6 feet above the ground. This 

 frame should have cracks about H to 2 

 inches wide, so as to admit only a little 

 of the direct rays of the sun. It can be 

 made from any waste lumb er or loosely 

 woven wire netting covered thinly with 

 straw of some kind. 



The soil should be pulverised to a 

 depth of at least 8 inches and entirely 

 freed from grass and roots. The seed 

 should be placed 4 by 4 inches apart 

 in little holes about lh to 2 inches deep 

 One seed should be put in each hole 

 and covered by simply raking the sur- 

 face over gently with a rake- 



The nursery bed should be covered 

 uniformly with some kind of straw 

 to protect the seed from the 

 cold and also to mulch the bed. 

 Pine straw or needles, if procurable, 

 will be found excellent for this purpose. 

 As the plants begin to shoot above 

 the ground a little of the straw should 

 be removed from time to time, and the 

 nursery thoroughly weeded. This should 

 be kept up until autumn, when the 

 straw should be permanently removed 

 and the top of the frame dispensed 

 with. 



When only a few hundred plants are 

 to be raised from seed, a large box, 13 

 inches deep, provided with drainage 

 holes and kept protected from the 

 direct sunlight will suffice. In very 

 dry weather, water should be applied 

 to the nursery bed or box either early 

 in the morning or late aftenoon, when 

 the sun is not very hot, 



Seedlings are a generally transplant- 

 ed in the autumn or spring after a 

 heavy rain or when the soil is quite 

 moist to a considerable depth. The plants 

 may be set out twelve to eighteen 

 months fromthe sowing the timeof seeds, 

 although it does no harm to let them 

 remain in the nursery two years, but 

 in such cases their tops should be slight- 

 ly pruned to prevent them from grow- 

 ing too tall and slender. The plants 

 can either be set 3 feet apart in hedge- 

 grows along fences or walks, where 

 they can serve for ornamental purposes 

 or they can be placed from 2 to 5 feet 

 apart in 5 foot rows, 



The soil should be thorougly pulver» 

 ised by spading or ploughing as deep 

 as possible ; then it should be levelled, 

 and holes, 9 to 12 inches deep, made 

 at the proper distances with a trowel 

 or spade. The plants should be placed 

 ju the holes with the tap root straight 



down. In cases where this cannot be 

 accomplished, owing to extreme length, 

 the root should be pruned with a 

 knife or ofcher sharp instrument. The 

 earth should be firmly compressed 

 around the plant, which is best done 

 with the foot. If the soil is rather dry. 

 and it seems desirable to water the 

 plants, this should be done. 



CULTIVATIOxV. 



Frequent and shallow cultivation 

 that will maintain a loose mulch around 

 the plants, as well as keep them free 

 from weeds, is best during the spring 

 and summer, when ievaporation is very 

 pronounced, because this shallow 

 mulching breaks the capillary tubes in 

 the soil and lesseus the evaporation. 

 In the autumn, after the plucking sea- 

 son is over, the soil should be turn- 

 ed up thoroughly to a considerable depth 

 with a spade or a plough, so that oxida 

 tion and disintegration will tak3 place 

 during the winter, when there is very 

 little evaporation. 



Commercial fertilisers or barnyard 

 manure should be applied late in the 

 winter or early in the spring and well 

 worked in around the plant, but not too 

 near the stalk, because the minute 

 feeding roots which take up the plant 

 food extend some distance from the 

 stem. 



Pruning. 



Every February or March after the 

 plants are three years from seed they 

 should be pruned down so that only two 

 eyes are left on the preceding year's 

 new wood. This can be done with 

 either knives or pruning shears, making 

 a clean slanting cut one-half inch above 

 the top eye that is to remain. 



Sometimes the plants get very thick 

 after five or six years of service and fall 

 off in their yield ; in such cases they 

 should be "collar pruned" — that is, 

 pruned to the ground by sawing off the 

 stems. This causes them to put out an 

 abundance of new shoots, which can be 

 picked late in tne same season.* 



In all cases primings should be buried 

 in the middle of the rows, as they 

 have considerable manurial value. 



* On this point Mr. Showers writes: — "The 

 Cinnamara experiment plainly shows that 

 when such heavy pruning is undertaken (and 

 I fully agree with you that this should only 

 be done when absolutely necessary) the process 

 should be commenced by heavy manuring the year 

 previous to pruning, and continued or maintained 

 by green crops or other manures every year until 

 the tea has been brought up to a full yield in the 

 fourth for nth year," 



