Page:The Olive Its Culture in Theory and Practice.djvu/71

Rh To restore the same fertilizing principles with the foliage of the tree, alone, it would be necessary to yearly use at least fifty-two pounds.

Without manure the olive gives but a small crop of berries. Anything that can be used to enrich the soil is valuable; decayed vegetable matter, night soil, old rags, shoes, bones, hoofs, guano, fowl dung, are excellent manures. Green manure, in the dry summers of California, can be employed to great advantage.

During the early autumn rains, plants of rapid winter growth, such as beans, lupins, vetches, are sown in the orchard and turned under in the spring, thus giving a cheap manure without any cost for carriage. Whatever may be the nature of the manure, it is important not to place it at the foot of the trees, but to bury it at a slight depth from one to two yards distant from the trunk, digging a shallow trench for the purpose. It is a matter of absolute necessity to manure the olive, under penalty of losing all produce if abandoned to itself, and remembering also, that the produce will always be in proportion to the manure applied. In fact some writers say, that if the olive is not largely manured it had much better be pulled up altogether.

M. Riondet says: The expense of cultivating the olive varies greatly. If they are never manured, or pruned, the cost will not amount to more than eight dollars per annum, per acre, or sixteen dollars for two years, for this is the period that always enters into these calculations, since the tree ordinarily only gives a crop every second year. If it is desired to have regular and abundant crops, we should not fear to spend eighty dollars per acre every two years.

In the winter, after an abundant crop, it is necessary to manure the orchard heavily, at an expense of twenty-four dollars per acre, pruning, will cost sixteen dollars per acre, ploughing, sixteen more to which add for the expense of gathering and taking the crop to mill, another twenty-four dollars, and so we reach the sum of eighty dollars per acre for a period of two years. There will be a product of one thousand one hundred and thirty-two gallons of olives, per