8o General Care of Trees 



A nitrogenous fertilizer, or an occasional dressing with 

 hardwood ashes, which contain the required minerals in 

 most accessible form, is to be recommended wherever the 

 vigor of the tree is impaired. A dressing of ten pounds of 

 7 ashes per hundred square feet, costing perhaps twenty 

 cents, will be found very amp>lc. 



Although in most cases hardwood ashes are as good a 

 fertilizer as need be, for very impoverished soils the follow- 

 ing mixture will be found serviceable and should be applied 

 in early spring before the leaves unfold, namely, one pound 

 of nitrate of soda, five pounds cotton-seed meal, two pounds 

 acid phos])hate, two pounds muriate of potash, the whole 

 mixed together just before using; one pound of this mixture 

 costing, if prepared in quantity, less than two cents per 

 pound, will suffice for a hundred square feet. This is also 

 an excellent top dressing for lawns. 



f The growing of a crop of clover, alfalfa, lupine, or some 

 {other similar crop and plowing it under while green, is also 

 Ian excellent means of recuperating impoverished soil both 

 j physically and chemically, and at the same time improving 

 'its aeration. 



While lawns are benefited by sheep, cow, and horse ma- 

 nure, and some flowering shrubs respond to treatment-with a 

 compost made of bone dust and manure, or better still, 

 with leaf- mold, the physical im])rovement of the soil for 

 water conduction by stirring and mulching, as advised in 

 the preceding pages, is usually all sullticient for arborescent 

 growth. 



Points in Grading. One of the most common mistakes 

 causing the loss of many old trees, is the filling up of 

 ground over the roots in grading operations, b}' which water 

 and still more surely the necessary air is excluded. This 

 careless burving of the roots shows inexcusable ignorance 



