HOW TO PLANT. 



59 



this simple and easy mode of measurement, crooked and irregular 

 rows are avoided, and the grove thus laid out will present a 

 regular and pleasing effect to the eye, and be much more easily 

 cultivated than one whose trees are set here and there, irregular 

 in distance and in line. 



The plow or cultivator can run much closer to trees that are 

 set in a straight line, and very little work is left to be done by 

 the hoe. 



There is great diversity of opinion as to the proper distance 

 to set apart orange trees, and yet it is a question of vital impor- 

 tance. We do not set out our groves for ourselves alone, but for 

 our posterity also for generations to come. We should, there- 

 fore, bring our best judgment to bear upon a permanent arrange- 

 ment for the position of the trees. He who successfully brings to 

 maturity a grove of orange or lemon trees is preparing a noble her- 

 itage for his heirs, and his work should be well and carefully done. 



The trees look small and puny when first set out, but do not 

 forget that they are imt there to stay, and that for years to come 

 they will continue to increase constantly in size, until by-and- 

 by the day will come when each of those trees will be forty or 

 fifty feet high, with a trunk which two men with outstretched 

 arms cannot entirely encircle, and with a fruitage of from five to 

 ten thousand oranges. 



It seems incredible, does it not, that these little trees, many 

 of them no thicker than your finger, should ever attain such 

 a size? Yet others have done it, and these will do it in time; 

 not in ours, perhaps, but in that of our children and our chil- 

 dren's children. 



If the trees are planted too close, the grove will be dwarfed 

 and almost wrecked, as the years roll on, until some day it will 

 become imperative to remove a part of the trees, and unless this 

 is done with regularity and the alternate trees taken out, the 

 eflfect will not be satisfactory, and the whole symmetry of the 

 grove destroyed, to say nothing of the loss of half the fruit for 

 many years. 



There are two budded groves not a mile from the writer 

 at this present moment, where ten or twelve years ago little 



