140 
FLORIDA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
in more air and increase the activities of 
the soil bacteria which are busy making 
plant food available. Plowing must be 
done with discretion. If the ground is 
too wet it may be “puddled,”as it is call¬ 
ed, and the air thus excluded, or if done 
during, or just previous to a season of 
rains there will be a heavy loss of nitrates, 
for the bacteria will be stimulated and 
their product carried away in the drain¬ 
age water. The fall is by all odds the 
best time to plow a grove. Spring plow¬ 
ing of any depth is unwise as one may 
thereby cut off the fine feeding roots 
which the trees have been growing dur¬ 
ing the winter in anticipation of the de¬ 
mands of spring growth. Under ordi¬ 
nary conditions, root pruning is no more 
necessary than top pruning, which is to 
say, not at all. And in general it may be 
said that any method of cultivation which 
turns up roots, large or small, may justly 
be regarded with suspicion. 
A young grove may be plowed to ad¬ 
vantage once or twice a year if the plow 
is run shallow near the trees. Later on 
the middles only should be plowed and 
if the trees grow as they should the time 
will come when the plow should be laid 
aside. The disk or cutaway harrow will 
go deep enough and the Acme is the best 
all around grove cultivator. I once 
heard a man say that he would not have 
a grove—and his trees were large—if he 
could not plow it. When one is so ad¬ 
dicted to the use of the plow it would 
pay him better to satisfy the cravings of 
his appetite for plowing on some other 
piece of land and let his grove alone. 
There is hardly any orange land in the 
state that calls for continued plowing. 
Clean culture all the year around may 
give good results at first but at best they 
are temporary, and the continued practice 
is both expensive and injurious. Our 
ideal is to raise a good quantity and qual¬ 
ity of fruit at the least cost. Neither 
continued plowing, nor 12 months clean 
culture will fit in this plan. Keep the 
grove covered with something during the 
hot rainy weather. This cover crop mow 
as soon as the rains stop—about mid Sep¬ 
tember in central Florida. Then begin 
a light cultivation if weather is dry and 
if you intend deep working don’t do it 
before the trees become dormant or you 
may keep them growing too late. Har¬ 
row during the winter enough to con¬ 
serve the moisture, but after blooming* 
every ten days or two weeks. Then get 
another cover crop started. Many grow¬ 
ers think that legumes in a grove coarsen 
the fruit and produce dieback. But those 
who have investigated more fully believe 
these evils due to the fact that in his 
fertilizing the grower has not allowed for 
the nitrogen furnished by his cover crop. 
These thoughts bring up the whole sub¬ 
ject of fertilizing, but that is another 
story. 
It may be set down as an axiom, other 
things being equal, the less cultivation a 
grove receives, the finer quality will be 
the fruit. Light cultivation is the rule 
on hammock lands. On higher land we 
must cultivate more or else plant the trees 
farther apart. In my opinion it is a mis¬ 
take to plant large growing citrus varie¬ 
ties any nearer than 30x30. Thirty-five 
feet apart would be better. Peach trees 
may be planted in the centers or the trees 
might just be planted closer, to be thin¬ 
ned out later. Trees widely planted will 
be more healthy, require less fertilizer. 
