I06 SUCCESS V/ITH SMALL FRUITS. 



of our berry fields with, and continue to get fully as satisfactory 

 results as in former years, when we depended upon stable ma- 

 nure at more than double the cost per acre. Some parties who 

 have been looking into the matter suggest that possibly our 

 satisfactory results are owing not so much to the fertilizers as 

 to the liberal supply of stable manure used in former years. 

 Yet the past season we picked 143 bushels of Charles Down- 

 ings per acre, from a field manured with bone and potash, so 

 poor and worn out that two years before it would only produce 

 six bushels of rye per acre. That land had no stable manure 

 on it, and if it was not the bone and potash that furnished food 

 for the berries, we would like to know what it was. The one 

 mistake we have made is, I think, in not using six or eight 

 hundred pounds of fish scrap or guano, and only 1,500 pounds 

 of bone. The fish or guano, being such quick-acting fertilizers, 

 would give the plants a much better start early in the season 

 than would be the case if only the bone and potash were used. 

 We shall try it the coming spring. In applying the potash 

 great care should be taken to have it thoroughly incorporated 

 with the soil, it being only about $% per cent actual potash; 

 the balance, being largely composed of salt, would, of course, 

 kill the roots of young plants if brought directly in contact with 

 them. In fields where we have used the potash, we have been 

 troubled with white grubs only to a very limited extent, while 

 portions of the same field where stable manure had been used 

 were badly infested with them, and while I do not think salt 

 will drive them all out of the soil, I do believe it will do so to 

 some extent. Besides the fertilizers I have named, we have in 

 the past six years experimented in a small way with many 

 others. Among them, Stockbridge's strawberry manure and 

 Mapes' fruit and vine manures, but have never had as good re- 

 turns for the money invested as from the bone and potash ; and 

 yet, while they have proved of such great value to us, I would 

 not advise you or any one to give up stable manure for them if 

 you can get it at the same cost per acre, but if you cannot, then 

 I say try bone dust and potash in a small way, until you learn 

 just \y\\2X yoiir soil wants, and then supply it, whether it be 500, 

 1,000, or 2,000 pounds per acre." 



