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the utilization of plant food resources of the soil is lime. We 

 need not expect that our bacteria, our living soil machinery, 

 will be effective unless we maintain a sufficient amount of 

 l^me in the soil, and that for the best results, both as to 

 <;uality and to quantity of fruit, we shall have to consider 

 tJie use of lime in a more or less systematic way. Those are 

 the three essential i)oints Avhich we will have to consider in 

 fruit growing, in so far as the supplying of plant food to 

 our trees is concerned, before we reach the thought of buy- 

 iiig plant food, in commercial forms. 



Before I take up the discussion of commercial forms of 

 plant food as applied to fruit growing. I want to say that it 

 has always seemed a pity to me that we have given up some 

 of the old practices That prevailed 50 or 75 or 100 years ago, 

 Now^ and then we still hear the older folks tell us about 

 composts, how they used to compost oats, sods or muck or 

 ]/eat with manure, and how they used to add a certain quan- 

 tity of soil to the compost and how much lime they added 

 and if wood ashes were available, they added, wood ashes. In 

 .some cases they commended leached rather than unleaehed 

 ashes in making up certain composts. You will find a lot in 

 Johnson's old muck book and other books on agriculture 

 which discuss compost making as an important part of farm 

 <iperations. 



It is my impression that we shall go .back, in this coun- 

 try, to composting. We abandoned it because of the high 

 cost of labor, but I believe that not alone from the stand- 

 point of plant food but from the standpoint of soil inocula- 

 tion, from the standpoint of maintaining the living machin- 

 ery in our land at the highest state of efficiency possible 

 under our climatic conditions, we shall go back to compost- 

 ing. The old fashioned gardener will tell you there is 

 nothing like well-rotted manure to start things growing in 

 the spring. 



The Chinese, after many centuries of farming with lim- 

 ited funds to buy plant food from outside sources, take the 

 mud out of their canals to go with clover and they put down 



