48 
FLORIDA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY 
growers and are made by placing 81-2 
foot lightwood posts eight feet apart 
north and south by fourteen feet east 
and west, upon which, running east and 
west are 2x6x15 feet stringers, or 
some use 1 1-2x8x15. On top of 
these stringers rest the 1x3x16-foot 
slats, though some growers use 1x4 
slats. Still others use lath for top, but 
the woven wire and lath top is not pop¬ 
ular. 
The land chosen varies all the way 
from low pine, through pine and willow 
oak, to rosemary and sprucepine scrub. 
Probably the growing tendency is to¬ 
ward the lower land. 
The preparation of the land is as thor¬ 
ough as if intended for an onion bed. 
When practical to do so, stable manure, 
cow manure, tobacco stems or even oak 
leaves are plowed under and allowed to 
rot before planting. Cowpenning is 
also a good preparation, but in the ma¬ 
jority of cases from one to three tons of 
blood and bone is harrowed in after 
plowing. 
While planting may be done at any 
time of the year, it is seldom advisable 
to do so between September and March, 
and probably seventy-five per cent, of 
the sheds are planted during the rainy 
season. 
After being stripped of their small 
basal leaves, the plants are set out 
eighteen inches east and west by twenty- 
five or thirty inches north and south, in 
beds nine feet in width, leaving a five- 
foot walk between the beds. The usual 
distance of 18x30, with walks, will give 
8295 plants per acre, while 18x25 inches 
gives nearly 10,000 plants per acre. Be¬ 
fore the roots get near the surface of the 
earth, wheel hand hoes and rakes can be 
used to an advantage, but after the 
shoots get up the scuffle hoe only is 
used. With young plants, the more cul¬ 
tivation, the more growth; but by the 
time the plants have got their growth, 
cultivation is almost if not entirely 
stopped, both because it is difficult and 
of doubtful utility. 
FERTILIZERS. 
After mixing and using twenty-four 
different formulas, I now use blood and 
bone and potash, with an occasional ap¬ 
plication of hardwood ashes. On new 
ground we usually apply blood and bone 
only for the first application and increase 
the potash with each application until by 
the time that the plant is about grown, 
when equal parts of low-grade potash 
and blood and bone are used (1-2 potash, 
1-2 blood and bone). One successful 
grower uses high-grade potash and 
thereby gets twenty-five per cent, of ac¬ 
tual potash. 
Nitrogenous fertilizers should be used 
with caution, if at all, during the growth 
of the fruit; for at last when the fruit is 
well advanced, it has a tendency to cause 
it to crack open at the base. An aver¬ 
age application would be four ounces per 
plant, with three or four applications per 
year. 
DISEASES. 
Blight is perhaps the only disease af¬ 
fecting our pineapples, but it seems to 
visit almost every pinery. In some cases 
the percentage is as low as one plant out 
of 2,000, but again as high as fifty out of 
1,000 plants. So far, we have discovered 
no cure for a plain case of blight, though 
if taken up, stripped and planted in a new 
place, the plants usually throw out a new 
