hed, they prove
themselves to be extremely hardy. Pines will grow and thrive on
comparatively poor soil, provided it is of suitable texture, but in such
soils it is necessary to supplement the plant food in the soil by the
addition of manures, if large fruit and heavy crops are to be obtained.
Pineapples are propagated by means of suckers coming from the base of
fruit-bearing plants, or from smaller suckers, or, as they are termed,
robbers or gill sprouts that start from the fruiting stem just at the
base of the fruit. They are also sometimes propagated by means of the
crown, but this method is usually considered too slow. Well-developed
suckers are usually preferred, as these come into bearing earliest, but
equally good, if not better, returns are obtained by planting gill
sprouts. The latter have the advantage in that they always develop a
good root system before showing signs of fruit, hence their first crop
is always a good one, and the fruit is of the best, whereas suckers
sometimes start flowering as soon as they are planted, before they are
properly established, with the result that the first fruit is small and
inferior, and the plants have to throw out fresh suckers before a good
crop is produced. Gill sprouts are slower in coming into bearing than
suckers, but the results are usually more satisfactory. Like the banana,
once a pineapple plant has borne fruit the fruiting stalk dies down, and
its place is taken by one or more suckers, which in their turn bear
fruit and die. Pineapples are planted in Queensland in several ways, but
by far the most common method is to set the suckers out in single or
double rows, from 8 to 9 feet apart, with the plants at from 1 to 2 feet
apart in the row. The rows soon increase in width by the growth of
suckers, and the throwing up of ratoons--surface roots thrown off from
the original plant, which send up plants from below the ground as
distinct from suckers, which come from the base or even higher up the
stem of a fruiting plant. It is not at all an uncommon thing to see the
rows grown together, so that the plantation appears to be a solid mass
of plants, but pathways have to be kept between the rows to permit of
gathering the fruit, manuring, &c. Pineapples have been grown in the
Brisbane district for the past sixty years, and I have been shown beds
of plants that have not been replanted for over forty years that are
still producing good fruit. This shows how well at home this fr