Conventional recommendations cover all distances, from 5 to 8 meters, with quincunx (i. e., triangular plantings) urged when the 8-meter plan is adopted. But the writer has seen too many groves spaced at this distance in good soil, with interlacing leaves and badly spindled in the desperate struggle for light, air, and sun, ever to recommend the quincunx, or any system other than the square, at distances not less than 9 meters and, in good soils, preferably 9.5 meters.
The former distance will allow for 123 and the latter 111 trees to the hectare. They should be lined out with the greatest regularity, so as to admit at all times of cross plowing and cultivation as desired.
From this time forward the treatment is one of cultural and manurial routine.
Annual plowings should not be dispensed with during the life of the plantation. These plowings may be relatively shallow, sufficient to cover under the green manures and crops that are made an indispensable condition to the continued profitable conduct of the industry. Nothing is to be gained by the removal of the earliest flowering spikes. Flowering is the congestion of sap at a special point which, if the grower could control it, he would wish to direct, in the case of young plants, to the building up of leaf and wood. Cutting the inflorescence of the cocoanut results in profuse bleeding and, unless this be checked by the use of a powerful styptic or otherwise, it is doubtful if the desired end would be accomplished. The earlier crops of nuts should all be taken with extension cutters or from ladders. No shoulders for climbing should be cut in any tree, the stem of which has not become dense, hard, and woody. Cut when the wood is the least bit succulent, they become inviting points of attack for borers.
With these reservations, there is everything to commend the practice of shouldering the tree, as offering the safest, most expeditious and economical way of making it possible to climb and secure the harvest. It is, of course, understood that the cuts should be made sloping outward, so as not to collect moisture and invite decay, and no larger than is strictly necessary for the purpose.
Manuring.[1]
The manuring problem must be met and solved by the best resources at our command. The writer has had pointed out hundred of trees that, wholly guiltless of any direct application of manure, have borne excellent crops for many successive years; but he has also seen hundreds of others in their very prime, at thirty years, which once produced a hundred select nuts per year, now producing fluctuating and uncertain crops of fifteen to thirty inferior fruits.
Time and again native growers have told me of the large and uniformly continuous crops of nuts from the trees immediately overshadowing their dwellings and, although some have attributed this to a sentimental appreciation and gratitude on the part of the palm at being made one of the family of the owner, a few were sensible enough to realize that it came of the opportunity that those particular trees had to get the manurial benefit of the household sewage and waste.
Yet, the lesson is still unlearned and, after much diligent inquiry, I have yet to find a nut grower in the Philippines who at any time (except at planting) makes direct and systematic application of manure to his trees.