Page:The Olive Its Culture in Theory and Practice.djvu/92

74 fix the blossom, is carried to the extremities, and the flower falls. To obtain good trees quickly, one should never sow underneath them at first, but however afterwards, to get good fruit it is advantageous to do so; but only then the year of the crop. Thus one should prune, manure, and cultivate to force shoots or young wood to bear fruit. The season following, sow under the trees to moderate the flow of the sap, stay the growth of wood, and cause the blossom to set. In an indifferent soil this would be hurtful, as there is never an excess of vegetation. However, in similar conditions, in place of sowing an exhausting cereal, they sow vegetables, beans, lupins or peas. Green crops, as manure, are often dug in, and thus the olive during summer, finds sufficient subsistence to help it to bring a crop to maturity. In growing other crops with the olive, it derives benefit from the frequent labor that the ground receives in their cultivation, as it loves to vegetate in a soil often stirred and largely manured. Few trees to the acre will produce a much better result than many.

The olive crop is a precarious one and therefore he will be wise who associates his olives with other fruits, that he may have a harvest. For level ground an acre can easily carry forty seven olives, forty seven fruit trees, such as figs, peaches, prunes, mulberries or whatever may be suitable to the neighborhood and three hundred and two vines, thus: