Page:A Practical Treatise on Olive Culture, Oil Making and Olive Pickling.djvu/24

 young plants the necessary elements of life, should not be adopted in an absolute manner in California, where sometimes there is no rain, or none of much account, from April until October or November. This is why, in the absence of rains, a few waterings distanced according to the season will perhaps be necessary to insure their start and promote their best development.

The little herbaceous cuttings raised in boxes, where there is not more than from four to five inches in depth of soil, should be occasionally watered, and just enough not to allow this thin bed to dry out, but it would prove a mistake to water them too abundantly.

For it might be said that the olive tree dreads too much water, or as much at least as will prove beneficial to other plants. While the vine cutting will grow luxuriantly with the help of repeated waterings, the olive cutting will suffer when similarly treated, and will certainly die out if its languid appearance, previous to its start being taken as indicating a need of water, it is too much soaked with it. Thus caution should be exercised in the waterings to be given to the young plants raised in nursery, but the ground should be loosened at their base as often as possible.

Frequent hoeing, while destroying the weeds, maintain always around the plants a moisture which is propitious to their growth, otherwise the ground would dry and form a kind of crust