CHAPTER 



III. 



FROM SEED TO GROVE. 



Few amateur orange growers realize the importance of good, 

 thrifty stock at the very outset, but it is a point that cannot be 

 too strongly insisted on, for herein lies the corner stone of a suc- 

 cessful grove. 



Given poor, diseased, stunted stock, and you may lavish time 

 money, care upon it, and be worse off in five years time than when 

 you began ; given good thrifty stock, and half the time, money 

 and care, will find you in the same space the owner of as fine a 

 young grove as one would need to possess. 



How to secure such reliable stock? 



Well there are three ways ; one to go to a neighbor who has 

 preceded you by several years, and has seedlings for sale, purchase 

 them and bud them yourself; another, to purchase trees ready 

 budded from a reliable nursery man, and still another, which will 

 best suit a shallow pocket, is to plant the seed and when the trees 

 are a suitable size bud them yourself. 



There is a right and wrong way of doing everything in this 

 world, and it is sometimes curious to see how frequently the wrong 

 way is chosen when the right way seems just as easy, and is cer- 

 tainly productive of more satisfactory results. Xow in this ap- 

 parently a simple matter of planting seeds ; most persons will take 

 the seeds hap-hazard from any orange they may happen upon, 

 the more the better, and going out, will punch a hole in the 

 ground with a finger, drop in a seed, give it a pat downwards, 

 and go away exultant, and return in a week or two to dig up a 

 fine healthy plant. 



Others will push the seed down into boxes and water them 

 carefully every day and rot them, while others will not water 

 them at all, but leave the sun to shine upon their covering of 

 s©il and dry it to a powder. 



And then thev wonder and scold — these three tvpes of amus- 



'21 



