26o 



The Canadian Horticultjirist. 



MANURES FOR THE ORCHARD AND GARDEN. 



(Extract of Paper read before the Western New York Horticultural Society by joseph Harris. 



MANURE is a by-product. Its 

 price is determined, not by the 

 cost of production, but by competition 

 among consumers. If stable manure 

 were sold in Rochester for lo cents 

 a load, there would be just as much 

 produced as if it sold for $2.00 a load. 

 This view of the subject seems to 

 be overlooked. If gardeners, nursery- 

 men and fruit growers would study 

 the subject of the oft ridiculed 

 "special fertilizers " I am confident 

 they would soon be able to use them 

 with great profit, and not be obliged 

 to bid against each other for the by- 

 product of the city stables. 



As fruit producers we should study 

 to grow those crops that people 

 are willing to pay a good price for. 

 And if we grow crops in which the 

 carbo-hydrates, instead of being worth 

 $30 per ton, are worth §100, or $200 

 or $300 or $500 or $1000 per ton, 

 we should see to it that the plants 

 have all the food, and especially all 

 the nitrogen, that they want to pro- 

 duce "a maximum growth. It will 

 not pay, perhaps, to use nitrogen to 

 grow carbo-hydrates in hay, corn, 

 oats and wheat, but it will pay largely 

 to use them to grow carbo-hydrates 

 in apples, pears, peaches, strawberries 

 and other fruits. But it should be 

 understood that when we use manure 

 for fruit trees we should see that the 

 fruit trees get it. If we grow wheat, 

 oats, potatoes, beets, strawberries 

 and seeds among our peach, pear, 

 and apple trees, we should have to 

 furnish an excessive supply of nitrates 

 before the fruit trees would get much 

 of it. The greater portion would be 

 aV)sorbed by the annual crops and 

 weeds, and it may well happen that 

 a moderate dressing of manure 

 would, by increasing the growth of 

 the weeds, actually lessen the crop 

 of fruit, for the reason that the 

 greater the growth of the weeds the 

 more water they evaporate and the 



drier would be the soil where the 

 roots of fruit trees are searching for 

 food and water. 



As vegetables and fruits are im- 

 proved, they require richer land, just 

 as improved herds of animals require 

 richer food. I do not call grass and 

 hay rich foods ; neither are phos- 

 phoric acid, potash, soda, lime, mag- 

 nesia and other ash constituents rich 

 food for plants. They are absolutely 

 indispensable, but in addition to 

 these we must have a liberal supply 

 of nitrogen. It is nitrogen that 

 makes rich land. Of the three 

 most costly ingredients of plant food, 

 nitrogen, phosphoric acid, and potash, 

 nitrogen is the only one that can be 

 evaporated or washed out of the 

 soil, and it is only in the form of 

 nitrates that nitrogen can be washed 

 out of the soil. And there seems 

 good reason to believe that it is only 

 in the form of nitrates that nitrogen 

 is taken up by ordinary plants. 



One thing is certain, our orchards 

 need more nitrates, or, as we used to 

 say, more available nitrogen. If we 

 can get nitrogen, it is a compara- 

 tively cheap and easy matter to get 

 phosphoric acid, potash, etc. The 

 cheapest source of nitrogen is the 

 organic matter in the soil, and this 

 is derived from a previous vegetable 

 growth, possibly some of it thousands 

 of vears ago and some of it onl}- last 

 year. The more recent the growth 

 the more readily it is changed into 

 nitrates. It is only within the last 

 dozen years that we know how the 

 nitrogen of organic matter was con- 

 verted into nitrates and thus rendered 

 available food for plants. The 

 change is effected by a minute plant, 

 or what would popularly be called a 

 fungus. The essential conditions for 

 its growth are air, a moderate 

 temperature, moisture and lime, 

 potash or soda. 



Stagnant water, by excluding air, 



