The Florida agriculturist. [volume] (DeLand, Fla.) 1878-1911, 1880-10-27
Orange Culture as an Investment.


NUMBER VII.
Wrttten for The FloTidG Agricultarist.
PREPARATION, SETTING.
After the land is stumped, sthe
next operation is breaking. II the
land had no underground upon it,
this will be very easy, simply to pillow
the land thoroughly, if on the con-
trary the land is like mine, the break
ing and grabbing will be quite
different operation. l have tried
different kinds of coulters, and have
found none yet to work satistac
torily. The difficulty being to hold
the coulter in place. The best I
found was steel coulter, welded on
the inside point of four inch
Shovel" plow, the upper end Of the
coulter being secured to the beam in
the usual manner. This done pretty
good work, but would frequently
clog, and jump out, in very heavy
work. The underground is very
thick willow oak. mixed with black
jack. l shall try this fall, running
the coulter separate, and shall have
made, heavy coulter, laid with tenn
pered steel and put on just the same
as shovel plow, on good strong
"grasshopper" stock, with extra
heavy grass sod. After cutting up
the land with tool Of this kind, a
good six inch turn pillow can be put
in, and the land turned over; now
go over with the grub hoes, and take
out everything, throwing the roots
in piles, and as sooa as they dry a
little burn them up. l neglected to
l.say that before the hraakiae eesa-
mences, the land should be raked of
clean, and all trash burned. Thus
guarding against wood lice. The
land is, now latter being cleared,
fenced, stumped, and grubbed, and
everything removed or burned off,,
what l call cleared. ] have indica.
ted that the land is what is known as
"heavy willow oak, land" 1 have
cleared a good many acres of thi:
land, for myself and personal friends
and although l have tried every way
to me known, to do it as cheaply az
was consistent with strictly first
class work. | have not been able
though always reconed myself, as be
ing the best man on the job, which
believe is conceded. / could not re
duce this work as described, to lesl
than $40 per acre. l am therefore
very much surprised, to see some
estimates of this kind OF work done
as is claimed in one instance at 81;
per acre. 1 do not wish to write ont
word against the gentleman who
makes this statement, as | believe
his intentions are good in the alb
stract, but if have one reader tina
has followed me one-halt as carefully
as have tried to write, he says the
thing is utterly impossible.
We are now ready to ''lay off
not on the veranda, oh no, not by
any means; how then? Fetch oat
the compass I'll show you. One side
of our fence, is accurate with thu
Government lines, we will begin there
we will start on the quincunx style, al
that is the most popular, and also
the most difficult. AS twenty-five
feet each way is getting to be con
coded to be the proper thing we viii
start at eighteen feet from the fence
we run line of stakes right parallel
with our base line, eighteen feet
apart, and on turning the corners
make them an exact right angle, We
run all round our piece, our stakes
being about five feet high, and al.
ways just eighteen feet apart, We
next run lie through the center, il
our pins each way dividing it into
fourths, we can now put in the rest
of our stakes by sight, as we have al
ways two stakes to line by, and we
SO put them in, until we have oul
pins all laid of, when we proceed to
dig our holes. These should be dug
at least three feet in diameter, and
two and one>half feet deep, they
should be then filled up with surface
earth, quite TO the top when they are