Page:The Olive Its Culture in Theory and Practice.djvu/77

Rh trees should be topped with an inclination of south to north and the cut always covered with grafting wax. A grove of olive trees should be planted so that at the spring equinox no tree will cast a shadow on its nearest neighbor from south to north.

This mode of propagating the olive is popular in Spain and in certain parts of Italy and Sicily. It was also known to the ancients. But in many localities it has been abandoned as being too uncertain. For cuttings take clean and well sized branches of from one to four inches in diameter, and cut in one foot lengths. These should be prepared in winter, before vegetation commences and the buds move, but if they are not immediately planted, they should be kept covered in a moist, cool place. The essential conditions for rooting are, moderate moisture in the soil, a subterranean temperature of about forty-one degrees F., with an atmospheric average of from fifty to fifty-two, thus giving time for the roots to form, extend and strengthen in advance of the first dryness of spring and early summer. Cuttings put in in April or May, root quicker but demand more frequent irrigation. Those will do best, which before being cut off from the mother branch, have been either ringed, or burned, or skinned, below a bud, so as to form a knot above the wound. There are many different ways of putting out cuttings. They may be planted in a trench well manured, each two making a triangle, the bottom of the trench being the base, and the two cuttings meeting at a point and being covered with from three to four inches of earth; when the young shoots have attained sufficient size to transplant, they may be torn away with a quick jerk, generally bringing with them a strip of bark which will suffice as a root, and leaving the parent cutting in place, where it will immediately produce more shoots which may be treated in the same way.

Very good results have been attained by planting a cutting horizontally, and covering it with four inches of earth; by some this