Pruning the orange trees twice a year
- After a first cut in May, one can start repruning the orange trees in August. This latter operation must be completed before October 15, so that the trees can be carried back to the orangeries to hibernate.
- Until 1994, there were more buttons to remove than leaves to cut with the shears. Then, the number of the buttons fell strongly while the number and the size of the leaves increased.
- Advice was sought at the Gembloux School of Agronomy. It resulted that the trees had been fertilized with water of the Meuse during the floods of the 1994 and 1995 winters.
- The trees were making hair like Thomson and Thompson in Tintin's strip "Land of Black Gold".
- There were two solutions to this problem: either neutralize the phosphate overdose, or to wait patiently as the fertilizers disappear gradually (hoping that a new flood did not happen meanwhile).
- The second solution was adopted, because when the tub of an orange tree is changed, the old earth is replaced by unfertilized fresh soil.
