New York Agricultural Experiment Station. 537 



tilled and the sodded plats. In the light of present knowledge and 

 practice, the quantities used are excessive and the trees should have 

 shown results if this land needed phosphorus or potassium. These 

 superabundant applications were made for three years without 

 visible results. 



The fourth season, 1907, the use of acid phosphate for the whole 

 orchard was discontinued but it was applied to cross-rows 12 and 

 13 at the rate of 15 pounds per tree. The muriate of potash was 

 again applied on rows 8 and 9 and on rows 16 and 17. Negative 

 results followed : — neither in 1907 nor thereafter was there evidence 

 that the trees had been " fertilized." It may be said that nitrogen 

 was the limiting factor and that without it the potassium and 

 phosphorus were inert. But there seemed to be no lack of nitrogen 

 in the tilled plat; rich green foliage, ample annual growth, fruitful 

 trees and large apples, all betokened an abundance of nitrogen 

 presumably supplied by the luxuriant growths of the clover cover- 

 crops plowed under in four of the five years. 



In 1910 the whole orchard received an application of quicklime 

 at the rate of one ton per acre. At that time the opinion was 

 current that land for most of our cultivated crops needed lime. 

 It was assumed that the apple could not be hurt and might be 

 benefited, and, not wishing to complicate the experiment with more 

 plats, the whole orchard was limed. There being no checks, the 

 effects cannot be told; but the men in watchful charge of the orchard 

 feel that the use of lime was wholly destitute of definite indications 

 of benefits — no response whatsoever came from the trees. 



Beginning five years ago, nitrate of soda has been applied in 

 certain plats in sod as heretofore mentioned. The results were rather 

 remarkable but these are most properly discussed later. 



measuring the effects of the two treatments. 



Trees probably respond in all characters to cultural treatment, 

 and in like degree. Thus, in the first five years of this experiment, 1 

 differences were found in fruitfulness, in size, color, maturity and 

 quality of fruit, in diameter of trunk, color of foliage, size and weight 

 of leaves, leafing-time, fall of leaves, annual growth of branches, 

 color and size of new wood, amount of dead wood, depth of roots 

 and spread of roots. In all of these characters the differences are 



1 N. Y. Sta. Bui. 314. 



