MAINTAINING THE FERTILITY OF ORCHARDS 



G. IfRED. MARSH^ CI.ARKSBURG, ONT. 



NO less an authority than Alex. Mc- 

 Neill, chief of the fruit division at 

 Ottawa, is in favor of oats as a cover crop. 

 He says they come on quickly in the fall in 

 spite of dry weather or trampling by apple 

 pickers, and the fact of their dying in the 

 fall is an advantage rather than otherwise, 

 as there is nothing to prevent the farmer 

 going on with the ^isc in spring. 



From personal experience I can see the 

 advantage of the above. In spite of all we 

 may lecture, the fact remains that the aver- 

 age fruit grower only gets his orchards 

 about half plowed before seeding, when he 

 has to stop and bend all his energies to get- 

 ting the spring seeding done. By the time 

 the rush is over the land is hard, and if not, 

 so hard that it is impossible to plow, thjc\ 

 land has lost a large amount of its valuable 

 moisture. If the orchard were seeded with 

 oats there is nothing to prevent giving the 

 orchard a couple of strokes with the disc 

 before seeding, and the straw will prevent 

 any damage being done by the tramping of 

 the horses. 



The question : " How shall we main- 

 tain the fertility of our orchards?" will 



be asked by all who heard Mr. Caston, 

 of the Ontario Fruit Growers' Association, 

 make the statement that a large number of 

 the orchards, especially in the older sections 

 of Ontario, are starving for lack of plant 

 food, and that in many cases the deteriora- 

 tion of certain varieties is principally due 

 to lack of food. A statement of this kind 

 coming from such an influential fruit grower 

 should cause us to pause and reflect on how 

 we can economically provide this plant food 

 for the trees. 



Some say, use stable manure. That is all 

 right as far as it goes, but is not a complete 

 manure for orchards, having an insufficient 

 amount of potash, and under our present 

 system of growing leguminous cover crops, 

 much more nitrogen than is necessary.- But 

 the chief argument against its use for the 

 orchard is that no farmer has more stable 

 manure he can apply with profit to his 

 annual ordinary farm crops, and if he ap- 

 plies it to the orchard he must skimp some 

 other part of his farm, which system, if fol- 

 lowed for som'e time, will eventually run 

 down the farm. Before we in Ontario run 

 down our farms, we had better decide that 



Portion of the Apple Exhibit at the Toronto Industrial Exhibition. 



While disappointing in some respects, the display of appUs at the recent Toronto Industrial Exhibition contained some excellent 

 exhibits, some of which are here shown. The Bay of Quinte district advertised itself by capturing the first and second prizes offered 

 for the best collections of 40 varieties, the first premium going to Mr. H. Dempsey. The first prize for the best collection of 20 varie- 

 ties wus taken by Mr. H. Marshall, of Hamilton. A levision of the prize list so that commercial varieties may be given more promi- 



,by 

 nence as desirable. 



426 



