44 
FLORIDA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY 
I have had a certain measure of suc¬ 
cess in growing groves, and to my mind 
the greatest success has been due to* this: 
I plant my young trees and immediately 
start to plow them. I didn’t say culti¬ 
vate, mind you ; I said plow. My expe¬ 
rience was founded on the advice of dif¬ 
ferent men who have been successful men 
in the raising of oranges, and I feel very 
grateful to them for the points they gave 
me. Some of those points were worth 
listening to. 
You take a young tree. Prof. Hume 
said last year they first started to culti¬ 
vate to keep down weeds and grass and 
they found now they cultivate for other 
reasons. In growing a tree, the'first thing 
you want to do is to get a root develop¬ 
ment. The way to do that is to induce 
those roots to reach out; to go down. 
Plow that ground, and plow it and plow 
it. You will be surprised at the results. 
There are groves in my neighborhood 
that have been planted as long as mine, 
and the trees are not any bigger than 
some of the twigs in my grove. It is be¬ 
cause I plozv. It does not take any more 
fertilizer; it takes less. 
To provide the necessary humus, plant 
in the middle of your rows, three rows 
of velvet beans. You have to work to 
keep them off your trees, but it is worth 
the trouble. Plow six feet around each 
tree, and let the velvet beans grow as 
much as they want to. If you will do that 
and let them die down, you will get a rich 
soil, even in the Winter Haven country. 
(Laughter.) 
Those Winter Haven people know all 
about their soil; our country is just the 
same. We are in the same boat. 
As the tree grows older, the depth of 
cultivation must be less. Don’t plow so 
deep. My experience is that it costs a 
great deal more to care for a young 
grove than an old one, except the culti¬ 
vation in the spring, and the fertilizer. 
Now comes the question: shall we cul¬ 
tivate an old grove or shall we not ? Some 
of the best I know do not cultivate their 
groves. I think Dudley Adams did very 
little of it on his old groves. If you can 
grow fruit without cultivation, you are 
going to get a better quality of fruit. The 
skin will be thinner and smoother the less 
cultivation you can get along with. But 
I think the stock the fruit is budded on 
may have a great deal of influence as to 
whether the grove will get along without 
cultivation. I have one that has not been 
cultivated for five years, and it has been 
bearing five heavy successive crops. It 
does not look so good, but it puts out the 
fruit. 
I am not prepared to say you should 
let your groves grow without cultivation, 
nor am I prepared to say they should be 
cultivated. 
In regard to* your bearing grove, there 
are two things I have found very impor¬ 
tant. One is, never to plow a bearing 
grove unless the ground is moist. I re¬ 
peat that; never plow a bearing grove 
unless the ground is moist. With a young 
grove, it does not matter. 
The other is; never plow your grove 
when it is in bloom. 
If you use plenty of fertilizer, and 
brains, you will have plenty of fruit. 
