CULTIVATION AND MULCHING 



"Decay" is mostly the action of bacteria. 



Lime is not a plant food to any extent, but is badly needed 

 by trees, to help them use plant food and to help put the soil 

 in good physical shape. 



Make your soil fine and loose and loamy before you add 

 fertilizer and you will not need to add so much. 



No two pieces of land are alike in plant-food needs. Learn 

 to know what elements are lacking, and supply them in right 

 proportions. Do not waste fertilizer by blind applications. 



Potash, nitrogen and phosphoric acid are the plant foods 

 that have to be supplied. Nitrogen usually is best gotten 

 through leguminous cover crops. Potash and phosphorus 

 have to be supplied in chemical form. 



Nitrogen is the growing material, making wood, and size 

 in fruit; potash goes into fruit largely, making flavor and 

 color; phosphoric acid goes into wood and seeds, but only a 

 fifth as much of it is used as of potash. 



Cover crops disintegrate and pulverize soil, add to it organic 

 matter, prevent plant food from leaching and (the legumes) 

 add nitrogen. The kind to use depends on your locality and 

 your soil. 



Get plant foods on the ground evenly, over a space at least 

 twice as wide as the branches cover, and apply it at the right 

 season. 



Double crops pay, but you must supply plant food and 

 moisture for everything that grows on the land. Do not rob the 

 trees. 



Cultivation, Mulching and Other 

 Orchard Treatment 



WHY should we use time and money in "fooling with the 

 dirt" around trees? Before we came to this world there 

 was fruit which grew without a bit of care. Why not 

 adopt those methods now? 



The answer is simple: We do not cultivate to kill weeds, 

 nor mulch to keep frost out. We do this work to increase the 

 number of bushels or boxes or baskets or carloads of fruit; 

 to better its size, texture, keeping qualities, its color and its 

 taste, and to make the trees more vigorous. We are not satis- 

 fied with either the kind of apples our grandfathers grew, or 

 the quantity they produced. 



To obtain these results, it is necessary to save moisture, to 

 promote drainage, to change insoluble plant-food elements 

 into available plant food, to improve the texture of the earth 

 (make it fine, and thus give roots a better chance to feed, mix 

 it with dead vegetable matter, and so subdue it more and more), 

 to increase the depth of useful soil, to make the temperature 

 of the soil average higher and have less range, to prevent 



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