FLORIDA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY 
13 
the proper time in order to conserve the 
moisture in the soil can be readily seen. 
Even though your tractor is not in use all 
of the time it is better to have it idle part 
of the time than for the trees to suffer on 
account of the lack of water or injury by 
weeds. 
The second reason is a very important 
one in Florida, viz., the inability of horses 
to do their maximum work during the 
hot summer days. Doubtless most of you 
are familiar with this condition. If a 
careless driver is handling the team you 
have to keep constant watch on him to see 
that he does not over-heat your team. I 
do not mean to infer that we are exempt 
from careless drivers of tractors, for they 
furnish us a source of constant worry. 
However, if you see that your machine 
has plenty of oil and water in the morning 
and at noon, there is little else to fear 
from a careless driver. This, too, is the 
period of the year when we want most out 
of our teams. In the hot days of March, 
April, May and June, the evaporation is 
enormous unless we cultivate often, and 
these are the months in which our teams 
are not capable of doing the most work. 
The tractor does not take exception to the 
hot days. In fact it operates better. Your 
fuel evaporates more readily in June than 
in December. 
LIFE 
One question in which all tractor users 
or prospective tractor owners are inter¬ 
ested is in the life of their machines under 
grove conditions. How many years will 
it last? This will depend upon a number 
of things. We can increase or decrease 
the number of years of service by the way 
in which the machine is handled. The 
figures that I shall give you represent 
only average conditions and not maximum 
possibilities. Circular 12 of the Exten¬ 
sion Division shows the average life of a 
tractor under grove conditions to be ap¬ 
proximately four years. This doubtless 
seems to be a very short period when com¬ 
pared with the life of a tractor in other 
sections of the United States, but we must 
not lose sight of the fact that these tract¬ 
ors were in use on an average of 123 days 
per year, more than twice the number of 
days used in the corn belt. Doubtless it 
would be better to give the number of 
days of work to be expected from a 
tractor rather than lasting so many years. 
Virtually all of our grove cultivation is 
done with harrows, either the cut-away 
disc or the acme. When the cut-away 
penetrates to too great a depth, wooden 
spools have been used between disc to pre¬ 
vent this. Using either the disc or acme 
the average number of acres harrowed 
was shown by data received from tractor 
users to be 20 acres in a io-hour day. 
This was for an eight-sixteen h. p. tractor, 
the size of machine most commonly used 
for grove work. Quite a few of the grove 
owners reported having done away with 
all horses on their farms and using tract¬ 
ors exclusively and have gotten splendid 
results. The fuel consumption as well as 
the amount of lubricating oil used per acre 
in cultivating would of course be consid¬ 
erably less than that required to plow an 
acre. According to the data obtained 
from growers this would amount to about 
of the fuel and oil required to plow 
an acre, which would be from y 2 to 
