No. 6. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 207 



Turning to some of the things we thought we linew, this fertilizer 

 problem that has been so puzzling along other lines of agriculture 

 is even worse when it comes to orcharding. There are a good many 

 things we thought we knew in regard to it. For example, we have 

 always believed that potash was the thing needed for fruits, but in 

 the Geneva Experiment Station they have been conducting a series 

 of experiments on this for twelve years. They put wood ashes on 

 at the rate of two hundred pounds per year of actual potash to the 

 acre. They got as a result in a five-acre field in twelve years a total 

 increase of |53,25, less than $1 per acre per year. This would not 

 pay for putting on the potash, to say nothing of paying for it. Sim- 

 ilarly in England, where some excellent experiments have been car- 

 ried on, the same thing holds true. In one of their experiments they 

 found that the use of potash was actually harmful instead of bene- 

 ficial. This does not mean, however, that we should not use potash 

 in apple orchards — far from it. It simply means that this English 

 soil, and the soil at Geneva, already contain enough potash. To add 

 potash there is of no value. It is like ''carrying coals to Newcastle." 

 It may be the same way here in Pennsylvania. At any rate, it is 

 part of our business to find out. 



In reference to the nitrogen question, wo have always supposed 

 that nitrogen was the wrong thing to use in orchards. That is true 

 in New Jersey, in the case of the peach, where experiments have 

 proved that it has a disastrous etfect on the crop. However, in 

 the English experiments that I mentioned, nitrogen was the only 

 fertilizer that produced results of any kind. This simply shows how 

 contradictory the results are. how impossible it is to generalize on 

 the basis of present knowledge, and that orcharding is essentially 

 a local problem. 



Then we look at the question of phosphorus. In New Jersey we 

 find that ])hosphorus gives the best results of anything they applied, 

 while in West Virginia they found acid phosphate fatal. So it goes. 

 The experience in one place is only suggestive for another. When it 

 comes to methods, the situation is scarcely better. 



We have supposed that the only successful method in orchard 

 culture was tillage with a cover crop, or possibly straight tillage. 

 Many of us have supposed that grass was the most harmful thing 

 we could put into our orchards. The English experiment shows that 

 grass was worse than any other treatment. The growth on the grass 

 plots was only about one-eighth that on the tillage. On the other 

 hand, if we look at the results in Ohio, which cover a period of 

 six years, they show that the growth was better, and that the yield 

 in the grass-mulched plots v.as practically double that in any other. 



Then the matter of selection. Science has taught us that in im- 

 proving plants we should utilize the principle of plant selection. In 

 fruits we find cases where this holds true, but, at the same time, there 

 are cases where it doesn't. I have a man here in Pennsylvania who has 

 tried selection under as favorable conditions, I suspect, as one could 

 ever hope to find. The man has never published anything about it, 

 and I never suspected it when I went to visit him, and found he had 

 tried it. He had, in four rows of Salway peaches, one tree that 

 was very much better than the others. He concluded that he should 

 like all of his Sal wars to be Itke thos<» of the one tree. He took 



