146 CALIFORNIA FRUITS: HOW TO GROW THEM 



there are certain amounts of material available from the animals that 

 are kept for cultivation and hauling, or to be had, often, for the 

 expense of hauling from adjacent towns. 



As already stated, coarse, unrotted manure can seldom be used to 

 advantage in this State, unless it be plowed under in the fall in heavy 

 soils with ample rainfall, or on lighter soils, perhaps, if well irrigated. 

 So great, however, is the demand for humus-enrichment of soils that 

 all available supplies of stable -cleanings are readily sold in towns in 

 the citrus districts to go considerable distances by rail to the orchards. 

 Thus fresh manure is largely used, although either finely divided or 

 well-rotted manure is superior. Corral scrapings, which are usually 

 the first resource when the idea of manuring springs up in a neighbor- 

 hood, are not always well decomposed, but they are finely divided, and 

 therefore decompose readily as compared with coarse straw, which, 

 it is said, has been found practically unchanged even after lying two 

 years in a dry, loose soil. It is, therefore, of the greatest advantage to 

 prepare barnyard manure with care for use in this State by some such 

 method as will be described below, which includes composting, thereby 

 turning to account nearly all organic material likely to be available. 

 This advice is obviously for the use of the orchardist who keeps live- 

 stock rather than for the large commercial grower. 



Clean up all the manure on hand just before the fall rains, putting the same 

 on the land, and either cultivate it in or plow it under. What manure accumu- 

 lates during the winter pile in a snug heap some five or six feet in depth, and 

 throw it over some three or four times during the winter to keep it from 

 burning, as well as to thoroughly mix it and thereby hasten decomposition. 

 Put horse, cow, hog, chicken and every other kind of manure that can be had, all 

 together. Never burn anything that will rot, but haul to the pile corn-stalks, 

 roots, and all squash, melon, tomato, and potato vines, etc., as well as weeds of 

 every description ; in fact, anything and everything that will decay and make 

 vegetable matter. Use fresh horse manure mostly to hasten the decomposition of said 

 vines, weeds, etc., alternating as the heap is made. By so doing there will not 

 be a weed seed left with vitality enough to germinate. It is well to have 

 manure piles under a roof to avoid leaching during the longest and most 

 excessive rains, but so situated that some of the rain falling on the barn can 

 be easily conducted to the piles, giving them just the amount of water necessary 

 to wet thoroughly without leaching, and no more. 



Treatment of Manure Without Composting. Even when com- 

 posting all refuse vegetable matter with the manure is not thought 

 worth the time and trouble, it is just as important to properly treat the 

 manure when stored alone. This can be easily done by some such plan 

 as is described below by an owner of a small fruit farm : 



Collect the stable manure in a large bin and keep it wet enough to prevent 

 burning or "fire-hanging." With a bin, say ten or twelve feet square and five or 

 six feet high, built convenient to the barn, the manure can be placed therein and 

 watered from time to time with much less trouble than it can be composted with 

 other material. This, of course, presupposes the ability to run the water through 

 a hose or by natural flow. Care must, of course, be taken that too much water 

 be not supplied, causing the substance to be leached from the pile. But in my 

 own experience I find the danger is at the other extreme, and when I open my 

 pile I sometimes wish I had used more water. In filling the bin leave one end 

 or side open as long as possible, for convenience of filling. 



Barnyard manure and compost carefully prepared in some such 

 way as described, and applied before the rains or early in the rainy 



