812 THE FRUIT INDUSTRY IN NEW YORK STATE 



The first application of these fertilizers was made when the trees 

 were three years old, and fourteen applications have followed. 

 Tillage has consisted of an early spring plowing and cultivation 

 until about the first of August, followed by a cover crop of some 

 non-leguminous plant. What are the results ? 



The orchard bore its first crop of fruit in 1902, when the trees 

 were six years of age, and it has borne nine crops since. An ex- 

 amination of the individual records of the sixty trees and of the 

 twelve plats, for seven crops, shows only negative results. 



In any way the data are studied, it is impossible to find a 

 decided benefit from one treatment over another. The nitrogen 

 applied is mostly lost. The potash and phosphoric acid are stored 

 where " neither .moth nor rust can corrupt." The storage, how- 

 ever, of these two food constituents in a soil such as ours, where 

 there are already from fifty to one hundred times the quantities 

 of them needed, is unprofitable business. One might as well gild 

 gold, paint a rose, or throw perfume on a violet. 



These are the facts, but facts signify little or nothing unless 

 they fit into a theory. Farm and garden crops on the Station 

 grounds respond to application of fertilizers. Why do not apples ? 

 The answer probably is that there is an abundance of plant food 

 in the soil, and the apple plant is preeminently able to help itself 

 to what is set before it. 



That there is an abundance of plant food in most cultivated 

 soil, many chemists now agree. In a wheat field in Rothamsted, 

 England, it was found that on land cultivated for centuries and 

 then subjected to fifty-four years' continuous cropping with wheat 

 and without fertilizers, there was still nutriment enough for a 

 hundred or more full crops. Much of this food is not available, 

 but it now seems that by the regulation of the moisture and by put- 

 ting organic matter in the soil whereby we secure the solvent action 

 of humus and of the bacteria that thrive in humus, much of the 

 unavailable plant food in a soil may be made available. How 

 much, it would be an assumption to say, as there seem to be no ex- 

 periments to prove this point. Indeed, to attempt to prove it 

 w r ould make a problem so complex as to be almost impossible, 

 and so variable for different soils as to require a solution for each 

 particular soil. Notwithstanding the lack of definite proof 



