Page:The Amateur's Greenhouse and Conservatory.djvu/212

194 fruit. But there are many who must grow them in pots or tubs, and our advice on this part of the subject is that the management should be characterised by liberality for potted orange trees are usually ghostly things, the victims of some sort of starvation.

The compost required for potting purposes is one consisting of four parts of rich turfy loam to one part each of thoroughly decayed manure, leaf mould, turfy peat, and sharp sand. The siftings of the sweepings of a gravel walk are preferable to sand if clean, but if containing many fragments of dead twigs may prove injurious by promoting growth of fungus on the roots of the orange trees. The drainage should be perfect, and the soil should be well rammed in to render it firm about the roots. Empty flower pots or pans may be advantageously employed to assist the drainage of large pots and tubs, for if the surplus water does not readily escape, the trees will soon become unhealthy. The potting should be finished with a layer of fat manure on the surface.

Regular and plentiful watering is a matter of the greatest importance. It is not sufficient to give so much water at such and such a time, but the cultivator must ensure that the whole body of the soil is moistened. If a tree that has long stood in the same tub appears to be languishing it may be desirable to probe the soil with a crowbar to ascertain if it is moist within, for it is likely enough that the water all runs away and leaves the tree, like Tantalus, dying of thirst in the midst of plenty. If it be found that the interior of the ball is dry, several holes should be bored in it with the iron bar and several copious waterings should be given, and as soon as the ball is well wetted, weak manure water should be supplied for the remainder of the season, and then the plant should be retubbed and as much as possible of the old soil removed from the roots in the operation.

The best boxes for orange trees are those made of slate with movable sides as in the subjoined figures. The rapid decay of wood and its tendency to produce fungus are serious objections to its use. The slate boxes are not only imperishable but incapable of producing fungus. However, boxes of wood made to the same pattern may be preserved in sound condition for many years by the use of paint without and pitch within, and the removal of the sides (a) is easily effected by merely lifting the side bars which brace them together.