Economics

However, is the planting of fruit trees another branch of agriculture? I continued. It is, indeed, answered Ischomachus. Then how can I understand all about sowing, and yet know nothing of planting?

What, don’t you understand it?How can I, when I don’t know what kind of soil to plant in, nor how deep a hole to dig, nor how broad, nor how much of the plant should be buried, nor how it must be set in the ground to grow best?

Come then, learn whatever you don’t know. I am sure you have seen the sort of trenches they dig for plants.Yes, often enough.Did you ever see one more than three feet deep?No, of course not—nor more than two and a half.Well, did you ever see one more than three feet broad?Of course not, nor more than two feet.Come then, answer this question too.

Did you ever see one less than a foot deep?Never less than a foot and a half, of course. For the plants would come out of the ground when it is stirred about them if they were put in so much too shallow.

Then you know this well enough, Socrates, that the trenches are never more than two and a half feet deep, nor less than a foot and a half.A thing so obvious as that can’t escape one’s eyes.

Again, can you distinguish between dry and wet ground by using your eyes?Oh, I should think that the land round Lycabettus and any like it is an example of dry ground, and the low-lying land at Phalerum and any like it of wet.

In which then would you dig the hole deep for your plant, in the dry or the wet ground?In the dry, of course; because if you dug deep in the wet, you would come on water, and water would stop your planting.I think you are quite right. Now suppose the holes are dug; have you ever noticed how[*](There must be something wrong with the text here. The MSS. give ὁπηνίκα, just when, but that has nothing to do with the matter in hand. Is something lost?) the plants for each kind of soil should be put in?Oh, yes.

Then assuming that you want them to grow as quickly as possible, do you think that if you put some prepared soil under them the cuttings will strike sooner through soft earth into the hard stuff, or through unbroken ground?Clearly, they will form roots more quickly in prepared soil than in unbroken ground.

Then soil must be placed below the plant?No doubt it must.And if you set the whole cutting upright, pointing to the sky, do you think it would take root better, or would you lay part of it slanting under the soil that has been put below, so that it lies like a gamma upside down?

Of course I would; for then there would be more buds underground; and I notice that plants shoot from the buds above ground, so I suppose that the buds under the ground do just the same; and with many shoots forming underground, the plant will make strong and rapid growth, I suppose.