FIFTY-FIKST ANNUAL RErORT. 137 



only half as thick as it should be, but I said, "Jack, now you have a 

 pretty good idea how much 23^2 pounds arc, go down to the young orch- 

 ard, take one row and be careful and put on the same amount per tree 

 as you have been sowing under the old ones. In a short time the man 

 was back well satisfied this time he had done his work in the proper 

 manner. I asked him how far this second sack had gone and he replied 

 about half way through one row. I was thoroughly vexed, because 

 without counting the trees I realized too late that he had put on this 

 acid phosphate much heavier than I had planned. 



The young sod mulch orchard where he had distributed this ferti- 

 lizer was on an average of possiblj'' ten years of age, and this particular 

 row where the acid phosphate had been scattered extended about yi mile 

 covering various types of soil, mostly sandy loam and rather light, but cross- 

 ing some heavy soil, and passing through rather a low spot which had 

 more or less of the wash soil from adjacent higher ground. It developed 

 that the man had put around these little trees twice as much per tree 

 as he had put on the 40 year old trees, or something like five pounds. 

 However the work had been done and there was nothing to do but watch 

 results. During the summer I could not see that the application had 

 benefited the old trees in any way. The small amount of two and a half- 

 pounds over a 40 ft. circle did not even affect the grass. 



In the young orchard in a few days the grass began to turn a darker 

 green, weeds of all kinds began to outstrip their neighbors in growth, 

 the foliage on the trees began to grow with added vigor, the terminal 

 shoots of the trees pushed forward much faster, fruit buds seemed to 

 form in greater numbers and all summer you could tell this particular 

 row of trees by its dense black foliage as far as you could see the orchard, 

 all because of the mistake Jack made in applying somewhere near the 

 proper amount of acid phosphate. The fruit which hung on these 

 fertilized trees during the first summer was larger. In fact after we 

 were through packing Transparent I found a very large specimen which 

 had been missed in the picking. I took it to the manager of our fruit 

 exchange and asked him what kind of an apple it was and he confessed 

 that he could not name the variety. The apple was as large as a good 

 sized Pound Sweet and looked much hke it. 



The texture of the fruit on the treated trees the first year was not quite 

 as good, nor did the fruit have as fine a finish as on other rows, there being 

 an indication that possiblj'^ a slight excess of acid phosphate had been 

 used, as there was just a little tendency for some of the apples to be 

 coarse, some were affected with Baldwin spot, and even a few had water 

 core. But these little deficiencies were more than over balanced by the 

 added size of the fruit. 



The type of soil covered in both old and young orchards as mentioned 

 would be termed as a whole rather sandy, but the experiments covered 

 some pretty heavy soil, and the benefits resulting during this season 

 seemed to show very strikingly all summer in the young orchard, as 

 much on the low ground and on the clay as on the sand. 



The next spring the trees which had received an application of acid 

 phosphate the previous season blossomed much fuller, and had I spent 

 a few hundred dollars for acid phosphate in the spring of 1918 and received 

 the same results on all my orcharding I believe I would have been better 

 off to the extent of a few thousand dollars in the fall of 1919. I would 



