■448 State Ho^iicultural Society. 



It should be the aim of the orchardist to put his land, so far as he can 

 in the condition it was when first cleared. He need not supply at once the 

 extraordinary amount of potash and phosphate that came from burning 

 the clearings of the original forest. But he should each year fertilize 

 his orchard with enough of these minerals to perfect the crop that they 

 will bear the coming season. 'No time should be lost in dong this, so 

 that winter rains and snows may carry this fertility into the soil. There is 

 no danger in an orchard that any kind of fertility will be lost through 

 leaching away. Millions of roots are ready to grasp it, and each has at 

 its tip end, where it feeds, carbonic acid gas enough to make available 

 what it needs. If more mineral fertilizers were used on all fruit trees, 

 leaf blight and other fungous diseases would disappear. With healthy 

 foliage, and the judicious thinning of fruit in the years when it sets too 

 much, some fruit buds would be produced even in the bearing years, and 

 a moderate crop would be produced the following seasons. Many a man 

 who has been disappointed in finding he could not sell his overabundant 

 apple crop for enough to pay the cost of gathering, has found the fol- 

 lowing season that if he had entirely sacrificed this large crop, a much 

 smaller crop the next year would have given him larger profits than his 

 orchard has ever afforded.- — ^American Cultivator. 



