172 The Canadian Horticulturist. 



NECESSITY OF FEEDING TREES AS CAREFULLY AS 



THE STOCK. 



AM no chemist. My knowledge of fruit culture and the manures 

 suitable thereto is purely empirical, or as we like to say, practical, 

 writes O. W. Blacknall in the Connecticut Farmer. It is founded on 

 the careful experiments and observation of near twenty-one years. 

 Long before I knew anything about the properties of plant food I 

 noticed that some fruit trees and grape vines on the place bore abun- 

 dantly of fine fruit, while others bore none, or had the fruit to rot on the trees. 

 This puzzled me a good deal, for there was apparently but little difference in the 

 quality of the soil, all of it being fairly good, and the other conditions seemed 

 the same. After some years I discovered what made the difference. The 

 trees that bore the best fruit, the most of it, and rarely failed, were the trees 

 that were from choice well supplied with potash. This set me to thinking and 

 inquiring. They told that kainit was the great and economical source of potash. 

 I bought it and applied it attentively to peaches, apples and grapes ; first to 

 only a few trees at the rate of two or three hundred pounds to the acre, which 

 amount I have since much increased. On sandy soil I find that it is needed in 

 larger quantities than elsewhere, though it pays well on all soils that I have 

 tried it on. 



I use from five to six hundred pounds per acre, with three hundred pounds 

 ground bone. I am a great believer in kainit for fruit, not only as a manure, 

 but as a preventive of disease and destructive insects. While it cannot take the 

 place of spraying for peaches and grapes, it gives the trees and vines so much 

 vigor as to enable them largely to resist the tendency to disease which often lays 

 them open to the attack of parasites. 



There is a peach orchard here which, excepting in the great freeze of 1894, 

 has not in many years failed to bear quantities of the most superb Amsdem 

 June peaches ; while other orchards fail two years out of three, that has hit 

 every year, with the one exception named. The owner is a believer in feeding 

 his trees as well and carefully as his stock. He uses ground bone and kainit 

 freely, but no ammonia except occasionally turning under a crop of cowpea 

 vines. 



For eleven years I have been largely engaged in strawberry culture, having 

 now in about seventy-five acres Here I use the dissolved bone, instead of 

 bone dust, as the former is quicker in its action, as suits the needs of this crop. 

 I find that six to seven hundred pounds per acre pays me well. Kainit or 

 muriate of potash I find even more necessary on strawberries, blackberries and 

 raspberries. It not only makes large and fine crops of berries, but also lessens 

 the tendency to rust and blight. On some lots I could not plant strawberries 

 at all for the ravages of white grub, did I not use kainit regularly. It drives 

 them away, and also the cut worm, which is sometimes a ruinous pest. I use 

 six hundued to eight hundred pounds kainit, or three hundred to five hundred 

 pounds muriate of potash per acre, with six hundred pounds, dissolve bone, and 



