Care of Fruit Trees. 633 



•ordinarj soil, cultivated as nursery lands are, should easily furnish 

 in three years ten times the plant food used by the trees. In 

 order to compare the drafts made by nursery stock and some of 

 the common crops raised in mixed husbandry, the following table 

 is submitted : 



Table XXYII. 



The amount of green corn necessary to remove an equal amount of fertilizing 

 ingredients per acre, taking the average of the value of the nitrogen, phosphoric 

 acid and potash ($4.87) removed by an acre of the trees (three years' growth) 

 would be 4,779 pounds. 



Composition of Green Corn. 



Water. Nitrogen. Phosphoric acid. Potash. 



Corn 78.61%' A\% .15% .33% 



Ensilage corn raised in drills usually yields from 12 to 20 tons per 

 acre and yet does not make drafts on the land which precludes 

 duplicating the yield the following season ; hence some other cause 

 than soil exhaustion must be found if the failure to grow a second 

 •crop of nursery trees without intermediate crops is explained. 



If the plowing of clayey corn ground a few days before the land 

 IS dry enough to be at its best frequently causes a loss of half the 

 normal crop, may not the digging of the trees or working the land 

 when too wet result in equal injury to the second crop of trees if 

 planted before the land has returned to its normal condition? The 

 •exacting demands made on the soil by nurserymen, and the locking 

 up of available plant food by untimely culture and by digging the 

 trees when the land is wet, may be held accountable for the failures 

 until some better reasons can be found. 



Nurserymen seldom follow nursery trees with nursery trees, as it 

 is said that they never do well unless one or more crops of clover or 

 grasses intervene. Since land which is intended for nursery trees 

 is usually highly fertilized, summer fallowed and cultivated an 

 entire season before the trees are set, and since it is well known that 

 much of the fertility added to the land and made available by 

 manuring and plowing is still in the soil after the first crop of trees 

 lias been removed, the question arises why do not nursery trees 

 follow nursery trees kindly ? 



Jethro Tull, many years since, succeeded in raising wheat after 

 wheat continuously without serious diminution of yield for twelve 

 consecutive years. Lawes & Gilbert, of England, have also experi- 



