396 Missouri State Horticultural Society. 



with roots and corn. The finest old specimens of apple and pear 

 trees are generally those in an orchard next to the homestead that 

 is used as a run for calves, sheep, pigs, and poultry the whole year 

 round. In these orchards the turf is short, and, being full of nutri- 

 ment, the trees keep healthy and prolific for an indefinite period. 

 Ashes, garden refuse, or any kind of road scrapings, or even scav- 

 engers' rubbish may be utilized for increasing our supply of orchard 

 fruits. They should be spread roughly on the surface in winter, 

 and in spring luirrowed and rolled down firmly. The result will 

 soon be a marked improvement in the size and quality of the crop. 

 Difference of opinion prevails as to pruning or not pruning trees, 

 some adopting one S3"stem and some another ; but, be that as it 

 ■ may, I never knew fruit trees continue to yield good crops for any 

 length of time unless the roots were supplied with manure in some 

 form or other. 



A notable part of the proceedings at the two days' session last 

 week of the New Jersey Horticultural Society, in Camden, was a 

 successful market gardener's report of four years' experiments with 

 "fertilizers and modes of application. In one instance, as a mix- 

 ture, he used twenty-five loads of stable manure and a ton of bone, 

 or of some other commercial brand, at a saving of- about twenty 

 dollars per acre over the use of manure alone. Another combination 

 was twenty-five bushels of poultry droppings, four hundred pounds 

 each of cotton seed meal, plaster, fine bone meal and sulphate of 

 potash, and ten bushels of muck, making about one and a hali' 

 tons, at a cost of about seventeen dollars per ton. This gave as 

 good results as bone meal and different brands of fertilizers side by 

 side, at a saving of fully twenty dollars per ton. In applying fer- 

 tilizer alone he used from one to one and a half tons to the acre in 

 spring ; barnyard manure was applied in winter on fall-ploughed 

 ground. By this process he increased his receipts from $1,750 per 

 year to 17,300. By high manuring and thorough tillage the crops 

 were larger, one to two weeks earlier, and, being of quick growth, 

 were of better quality, found an early market, ready sale at good 

 prices and a fair profit, and by the time the market was overstocked 

 his crop was harvested and the same ground ready for a second crop 

 the one manuring serving for both. 



The benefit of soluble and readily available plant-food was 

 shown in the following averages of four years with seeds and plants 

 from plantings to harvest : Early cabbage, (wintered plants), eighty 

 days ; lettuce, forty-four ; early tomatoes, fifty-two ; cauliflower, 

 eighty ; celery, seventy ; radish (first crop, seed), fifty ; beets, sixty- 



