HOW TO GROW AND MARKET FRUIT 



It is potash and phosphorus which put color in fruit, 

 which give it the rich flavor, and which harden the wood of 

 trees so they can stand zero weather. We build the framework 

 and size of our apples or peaches or grapes with nitrogen, but 

 we put the high quality in them with the two other foods, and 

 to a slight extent with lime. In this, when analyzed, lies the 

 explanation of why a sod-mulched tree will put a higher color 

 on its fruit than a cultivated one; also why a cultivated tree 

 generally is the larger. Sod-mulched orchards generally, com- 

 paratively speaking, lack nitrogen, and have plenty of potash 

 and phosphorus, while in cultivated orchards this condition 

 is likely to be reversed, or has that tendency unless corrected. 



In our judgment, the orcharding system best to use is the 

 one that will combine the good points of these two methods, 

 giving trees or plants the growing material nitrogen in 

 the greatest proportions before July, and the ripening and 

 quality producing materials potash and phosphorus later. 



While cover crops absorb plant-food in the fall, they are 

 doing another good act. The food they use generally is in 

 available form; that is, ready dissolved, in solution. If it were 

 to be left in this shape over winter, much of it would leach 

 away; but, when the cover plants use it, they lock it up until 

 spring, and so prevent its waste. 



These are the principal reasons why cover crops are so 

 valuable in orcharding. Each man must study his own situa- 

 tion, decide what his trees need, and plan the best and cheapest 

 way to get these materials. The best sources of the needed 

 plant-foods will be found now in one form of the elements, 

 again in another. Even one kind of cover crop will not do, 

 year after year, so well as rotation of them. 



Again Bailey has stated a point so clearly that we can not 

 do better than quote him: "The choice of the proper crop 

 for the covering of an orchard is a local matter, the same as 

 the determination of the method of tillage or the kind of fer- 

 tilizer is. There is no one cover crop which is best for all pur- 

 poses and all conditions. The grower must study the condi- 

 tion of his trees and his land, and then judge as best he may 

 what course he shall pursue. 



"Nature's cover crops, at least upon farms, are weeds, and 

 these may be useful if allowed to grow in the fall after the 

 tillage is completed. The difficulty is that they cannot always 

 be relied upon to cover the land at the time when they are 

 wanted, most of them do not live through the winter, and they 

 are very likely to become a serious nuisance. It is therefore 

 best to substitute some other plant for the weeds. 



"In the question of the choice of cover crops, the grower 

 must remember that there are two great classes in respect 

 to their power to gather nitrogen. The one class is non-legu- 

 minous, comprising those plants which take only such nitrogen 

 as has already been worked over into available form by plants 

 and animals; the other class is the leguminous plants, com- 

 prising those which have the power of appropriating and 

 utilizing free nitrogen. 



24 



