ANNUAL WINTER MEETING AT WARRENSBURG. 187 



count of two year's heavy crops which impaired the vitality of the 

 trees. 



After such heavy cropping the trees loose their healthy appear- 

 ance, bearing a sickly color, and the once upright, elastic limbs are- 

 drooping and stiffened as with age. How could we expect them to 

 flourish in this condition ? Even the beautiful flowers loose their 

 bright pinkish color. The apples, instead of being rosy, crisp, juicy 

 and delicious, are colored with milldew, dry and insipid to the taster- 

 following a law of nature, '^ that like begets like," so sickly trees pro- 

 duce sickly fruit. Our orchards and markets are full of it, the conse- 

 quence of over-cropping and over-bearing. No intelligent farmer 

 would expect to get a remunerative crop of giain of one kind from- 

 the same piece of ground for twenty or twenty-five } ears in succession, 

 without a constant effort to keep up the fertility of the soil, and even 

 with such effort a rotation of crops is by far the wiser course to pur- 

 sue. But with the orchard there is no chance for rotation. When it i& 

 once planted, it is for a generation, and year after year the same draft 

 is made on the soil, increasing as the trees grow larger, until every 

 square foit of the soil is filled with a network of roots and fibers, tak- 

 ing up from every spot the elements upon which the life and vigor of 

 the trees depend. Hence, the great necessity of regularly adding ta 

 the soil such fertilizers as will best replace these elements, and supply 

 the constant draft made on the soil. 



To cultivate an orchard successfully for growth and profit, com- 

 mercial fertilizers are out of the question. They would cost too much 

 for the doubtful profit in them, and were they as good as claimed, they 

 are by nature too stimulating and short lived. You would see its effect 

 in the tree but not in the fruit. Ashes, either leached or unleached, 

 spread broadcast over the ground, are of great value, and there is little- 

 danger of using too much. 



While it is evident that by very heavy and constant manuring it is 

 possible to stimulate a too rapid growth ot the trees, resulting in short- 

 ening their lives, still my observation has led me to conclude that 

 where there is one thus injured by two much manuring, there are 

 scores that are more injured by not getting enough. Seed your orchards 

 to clover and pasture to hogs, and while you are converting the clover 

 and wormy apples to pork, you will be at the same time destroying the 

 codling moth, and fertilizing the ground. In fact, I know of no better 

 or more practical way than this in cases where the orchard is located oa 

 steep hillsides, where there is danger of the land washing by being 

 plowed. 



