The Soil.
The soils for cocoanut growing are best selected by the process of exclusion. The study of the root development of the palm will prove to be an unerring guide to proper soil selection.
The roots of monocotyledons, to which great division this palm belongs, are devoid of the well-defined descending axis, which is possessed by most tree plants, and is often so strongly developed as to permit of rock cleavage and the withdrawal of food supplies from great depths.
The cocoanut has no such provision for its support. Its subterranean parts are simply a mat-like expanse of thick, fleshy, worm-like growths, devoid of any feeders other than those provided at the extreme tips of the relatively few roots. These roots are fleshy (not fibrous) and can not thrive in any soil through which they may not grow freely in search of sustenance. It then becomes obvious that stiff, tenacious, or waxy soils, however rich, are wholly unsuitable. All very heavy lands, or those that break up into solid, impervious lumps, and, lastly, any land underlaid near the surface with bed rocks or impervious clays or conglomerates, are naturally excluded. All other soils, susceptible of proper drainage, may be considered appropriate to the growth of the palm. Spons (Encyclop.) advocates light, sandy soils. Simmonds (Trop. Agric.) names nine different varieties suitable for this purpose, describing each at tedious length, and laying more or less emphasis upon a sandy mixture. These might all have been covered by the single word “permeable.”
As a matter of fact every grain of sand in excess of that required to secure a condition of perfect permeability is a positive disadvantage and must be paid for by a correspondingly larger area of cultivation and by future soil amendment. For the rest, the richer and deeper the soil the less the expense of maintaining soil fertility.
The preparatory work of establishing an orchard is light, provided the location is not one demanding the opening of drainage canals, and on lands of good porosity it involves neither subsoiling nor a deeper plowing than to effectually cover the sod or any minor weed growths with which it may be covered.
It has long been the reprehensible practice of cocoanut growers to merely dig pits, manure them, set the plants therein, and permit the intervening lands (except immediately about the trees) to run to weeds or jungle.
A group of sprouted nuts.
In the Philippines the native planter has not yet progressed beyond the pit stage, nor do his subsequent cultural activities include more than the occasional “boloing” of such weeds as threaten to choke and exterminate the young plants.
Fortunately it will not be long till the force and influence of example are sure to be felt by our own planters. The progressive German colonist of Kamerun, German East Africa, and the South Pacific Islands, as well as the French in Congo and Madagascar, are vigorously practicing conventional, modern orchard methods in the treatment of their cocoanut groves, and it is amazing to read of discussions between Ceylon and Indian nut growers as to the best method of tethering cattle upon cocoanut palms in pasture, so as to obtain the most benefit from their excreta.
With an intelligent study of the plant and its characteristics it is believed that our native planter may put into practical use the knowledge that the veteran Indian planter has in fifty years failed to learn or utilize. He will learn that in time the entire superficies of his orchard will be required by the wide-spreading, surface-feeding roots of the trees, and that pasture crops of any kind, grown for any purpose other than soiling or for green manuring, are prejudicial to future success. He will know that the initial preparation of all of his orchard and its continuous maintenance in good cultivation are essential not only to the future welfare of his trees but as a necessary means in connection with a judicious intermediate crop rotation.
Hence the preparatory requirements may be summed up as such preliminary soil breaking as would be required for a corn crop in similar lands, succeeded by such superficial plowings and cultivations as would be required to raise a cotton or any other of the so-called hoed crops.