SENECA - College of Stoic Philosophers

EPISTLE LXXXVI.
In spring sow beans ; then, too, O clover plant,
Thou'rt welcomed by the crumbling furrows ; and
The millet calls for yearly care. a
You may judge by the following incident whether
those plants should be set out at the same time, or
whether both should be sowed in the spring. It is
June at the present writing, and we are well on
towards July and I have seen on this ;
very day
farmers harvesting beans and sowing millet.
But to return to our olive-yard again.
I saw
it planted in two ways. If the trees were large,
Aegialus took their trunks and cut off the branches
to the length of one foot each he then
;
transplanted
along with the ball, after cutting off the roots, leaving
only the thick part from which the roots hang.
He smeared this with manure, and inserted it in the
hole, not only heaping up the earth about it, but
stamping and pressing it down. There is nothing,
he says,
more effective than this packing process ^ ;
in other words, it keeps out the cold and the wind.
Besides, the trunk is not shaken so much, and for this
reason the packing makes it possible for the young
roots to come out and get a hold in the soil. These are
of necessity still soft ;
they have but a slight hold,
and a very little shaking uproots them. This ball,
moreover, Aegialus lops clean before he covers it up.
For he maintains that new roots spring from all the
parts which have been shorn. Moreover, the trunk
itself should not stand more than three or four feet
out of the ground. For there will thus be at once a
thick growth from the bottom, nor will there be a large
stump, all dry and withered, as is the case with
old olive-yards. The second way of setting them out
was the following
: he set out in similar fashion
branches that were strong and of soft bark, as those
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