FLORIDA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
33 
task for an ordinary laborer but it gives 
good results in keeping a grove uniform 
in condition. For my bearing trees I use 
from twenty to fifty pounds of land plast¬ 
er per tree and suppose that it does some 
good. I use also about twenty pounds of 
Kanit on the same supposition, where the 
drainage is good. But if I depended on 
sulphate of ammonia for my nitrogen, es¬ 
pecially in early spring when I apply most 
of it, I would not use the Kanit on account 
of the well known fact that a chlorin and 
a sulphate of ammonia do not act well to¬ 
gether; 
I had a great deal of trouble with my 
outside rows of trees. The groove is. partly 
surrounded by heavy timber that I did 
not care to destroy. I put all kind's of ferti¬ 
lizer on the outside rows and a great deal 
of it, but the woods looked much better 
than the orange treees and the application 
of lime was all that seemed to help the 
orange trees. Then I decided to dig a 
good deep ditch between the wood's and 
the grove. Now the outside trees look 
best and one dollar’s worth of ditching 
did more than ten dollars worth of ferti¬ 
lizer could have done for them. The 
ditches are also very useful in case of a 
flood. I am convinced that one wet, sobby 
season can do a grove more lasting injury 
than a dozen droughts. Also when high 
land does get too wet it seems h> suffer 
more than low land. If we can keep our 
ground front staying too wet and “sob¬ 
bing” off the deep feeding roots the 
drought will have much less effect. So a 
good, deep ditch even on high land may 
largely relieve the need for irrigation. I 
use also a lot of muck and' lime but as 
their action is more directly on the soil 
than as a fertilizer I will mention them 
under cultivation. 
Cultivation or, in a general way, the 
handling of the soil is the real problem in 
handling a citrus grove and one of which 
I know little and confess a great amount 
of ignorance. But for the sake of discus¬ 
sion I will beg your leniency. When I first 
became interested in this problem the 
clean culture method seemed to be gener¬ 
ally practiced. We cultivated all the year 
and hauled in mulch to keep up the hum¬ 
us. This seemed alright especially on very 
dry land where nothing would grow any¬ 
way and the weather was too warm for 
much summer work. But the trees seemed 
to show age badly and dieback and disease 
were too common. Then we began to let 
the grass grow a little after the summer 
rain had wet the ground thoroughly, and 
we could cultivate the fertilizer into the 
wet soil, so that the trees‘would get it be¬ 
fore the sun evaporated it. When the grass 
died in the fall or was used for hay we 
commenced over. The grass took the 
place of some of the mulch hauling and it 
seemed to do' better. About six years ago 
my summer fertilizer did not arrive on 
time, we had early rains, and as I had 
some beggar weed and a lot of grass the 
ground was covered with tender stuff. 
When the fertilizer did come I had to put 
it on and cultivate it in to save it. It was 
very easy to see the result and I decided 
not to try that way again. As I could not 
see how the sun would destroy my citrus 
fertilizer I next put it on before the rains 
began, then let the grove take care of itself 
till late fall, when it was a mass of tang¬ 
led and dead vegetation except where I 
had cut hay. This method seemed to me 
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