58 
FLORIDA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY 
who plows deep and the man who believes 
dn shallow plowing have each been suc¬ 
cessful. The man who sprays and the 
man who declines to spray have each 
grown superior fruit. The man who irri¬ 
gates and the man who does not have in 
many instances produced equally heavy 
crops, though in quantity the balance is 
with the irrigated grove, and carrying 
quality is usually with fruit which has 
not been irrigated. 
In some respects a young tree requires 
more attention than an established tree. 
Under my personal management frequent 
hand cultivation is the rule until the trees 
are four years old. They are fertilized 
often and sparingly. For working stock 
a scuffle hoe shaped without heating from 
an old cross-cut saw is useful. Some 
such complicated process is necessary at 
present to secure a blade which is harder 
than the scuffle hoe generally sold. The 
hard blade obviates the necessity for fre¬ 
quent filing. 
This hoe saves much hand labor, as 
one man with such a hoe will destroy 
more grass than two men with hoes of 
the ordinary type. For aerating the soil 
after the use of the scuffle hoe, a four- 
tined potato digger is employed. There is 
a saving of labor after the use of both 
tools, and better work. 
For horse implements, the turn-plow, 
the improved disk harrow, the Acme har¬ 
row, the mower and horse rake appear to 
be the most effective. 
The mule is the most reliable and the 
cheapest traction engine in existence for 
all-round work. Compared with the 
horse, he eats less and does more. Stocky 
mules of average weight are more satis¬ 
factory thali mules excessively large or 
small. A mule in good flesh eats no more 
than a poor one, while the extra weight 
furnishes additional energy. 
From my observation, the effective 
grove unit, capable of producing fruit at 
the least cost per box, is a three-man, 
two-mule grove. The object is to pro¬ 
vide a sufficiency of labor and the mini¬ 
mum of waste and overhead expense. The 
force mentioned will care for three thou¬ 
sand trees, approximately. 
It is economy to have sufficient labor 
at a time when it is needed. When young 
trees become wrapped in grass, more la¬ 
bor is required to work them properly 
than if the necessity had been met at an 
earlier date. The same is true with re¬ 
gard to land in the open “middles” sub¬ 
jected to clean cultivation in the spring. 
Should labor be unavailable when re¬ 
quired, grass is eventually subdued at an 
increased cost. The old adage “a stitch 
in time” has direct application in the man¬ 
agement of an orange grove. 
It will pay any grower in Florida to 
produce his own hay, and it is worth 
while to build a barn large enough to 
store the hay when produced. Stacking 
hay is bad practice, necessitating a double 
handling when the stack is broken and the 
loss of considerable hay from leaky stacks. 
It is also poor economy to provide more 
tools than shelter for their protection. 
Bear in mind as well that one inroad of 
cattle will damage a grove more in dollars 
and cents than the expense of maintain¬ 
ing a good fence. 
Clean cultivation in the spring and cov¬ 
er crops in the summer and early fall is 
