FLORIDA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY 
43 
good humus, whereby food can be incor¬ 
porated. This brings to mind a true story 
of a gentleman who, with his gardener 
was showing an interested friend around 
his garden and pleasure grounds. After 
they had passed over all the interesting 
trees, they came to an enclosure in an ob¬ 
scure corner. The gentleman paused a 
moment and with a smile of satisfaction 
and finger pointing to a manure heap said, 
“There, is my head gardener.” 
In my opinion, to obtain returns in the 
early days from your trees on high sandy 
pine lands, it is necessary for them to be 
provided with a stable manure, under and 
on each side of the plant, though not near¬ 
er than say three inches to the roots. 
Should this not be procurable, then use 
the next best thing, decayed vegetable 
matter, such as may be termed “muck.” 
Added to this, do not omit steamed bone, 
for I have found in experimenting, that 
where I have opened up the soil, the young 
roots have literally hugged the small par¬ 
ticles of bone. 
It is of no use “beating about the bush,” 
as the saying goes, for there are a great 
many of us in our planting schemes and 
after attention thereto, who seem to for¬ 
get the words, “be thorough This 
brings me to a remark made by a well 
known lady in the Florence Villa district, 
who said, “Yes, we see today so many 
instances where in the past, people planted 
their five-dollar trees in less than one-dol- 
lar holes.” The moral being, that had 
they put more money into the preparation 
for the plant, better returns would have 
followed. 
We now come to water, which is a 
greater necessity than we have hitherto 
thought and in my opinion all plant life 
on these high sands needs much more than 
they receive from the clouds. I like wa¬ 
ter, even sometimes mixed, but in any case 
regularly during my waking hours, and 
we are apt to forget that these trees re¬ 
quire water regularly just the same. If 
our neighbors are all following the same 
method, like one goat follows the other 
on the mountain trail, we are inclined to 
follow in like manner and go harrowing 
and harrowing. So far as it goes, it is al¬ 
right, and we preserve our trees by so do¬ 
ing, but to get the best out of them in our 
early as well as later days, we must watch 
and give them water before they get too 
far, for although we stir the ground by 
harrowing, this necessity of water calls, 
I think I am right in saying, at some 
period or other every year that goes by. 
Our first trees of 590 Trapps and 10 
Pollocks were planted during July, 1917, 
and are now of various sizes up to 16 feet 
and even more than that in width. There 
is one distinct observance I have made, 
that we on high sand can produce a tree 
with many more short fruiting branches 
than is usually found on trees on muck 
soils; naturally we fail when it comes to 
producing long vigorous shoots. 
The method of planting the first batch 
will show you an omission of stable ma¬ 
nure, for each hole was cut out to a depth 
of 2^2 feet and about 3 feet in diameter. 
The top soil was used in the bottom and 
on the sides of the ball of the tree, then a 
mixture of 2 pounds of steamed bone, I 
pound of castor pomace and y 2 pound of 
goat manure was carefully put around the 
