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that fruit trees are a more exhaustive crop, surely as ex- 

 haustive a crop as annual crops M'hich we may grow on the 

 land of the same character, and that will explain to us why 

 failure to respond to fertilization within the first two or 

 three years in the life of the orchard does not at all indicate 

 that there Mill be failure to respond to fertilization later on. 



Perhaps one of the most impressive experiences I had in 

 this connection was what I had in South Jersey where we 

 have a peach orchard, for experiment. Prof. Blake, our 

 horticulturist, pointed out to me a year after the trees were 

 set out, the amount of wood growth of those trees was more 

 than sufficient to indicate that plant food was being placed 

 Cit the disposal of those trees in adequate, perhaps excessive, 

 amounts. It happened that these trees had been planted on 

 very poor, sandy, gravelly loam. The soil had been under 

 corn a year or two before that and the corn finally ceased 

 to be profitable. 



Prof. Blake claims that the land finally refused to grow 

 snap beans when the trees were set out, and he said to me, 

 "It is very well to talk about fertilizers, but I am inclined 

 to think that if I am to take the trees themselves as a guide, 

 that there is ample plant food in the soil and that the use 

 of fertilizers would not be justified". I said to him, "I am 

 Eot a fruit grower, I do not profess to know anything about 

 the production of it, I do not profess to know very much 

 about peaches and peach trees, but I am willing to make this 

 statement, that within a year or two or three years, we will 

 realize that profitable production of peaches on this partic- 

 ular soil is not possible without the use of plant food from 

 outside sources. 



Since then, we have found that the quantitj^ of fruit 

 and the size of the fruit is almost in direct proportion to 

 the amount of nitrogen which we have applied in the spring 

 in the peach orchard. We have used quantities of 50 

 pounds per acre. 100 pounds per acre and 150 pounds per 

 Acre of nitrate of soda and we had almost a proportional 

 increase where the larger quantities of nitrate of soda were 



