NINETEENTH ANNUAL MEETING. 195 



Mr. Fanton : Do you put all your manure on your grass 

 land ? 



Mr. Lyman : We put some on the meadow land as a 

 top dressing - . I do not like to plow under any fertilizer. It 

 does not make much difference in the orchard. You can turn 

 it under all right, of course, but I do not believe in plowing 

 under anything for grass. I would rather have it on top. 



Mr. Barnes: Do you use any potash before your peach 

 trees come into bearing? 



Mr. Lyman : Saltpeter contains potash. I do not try 

 to grow a tree without giving a balanced ration during the 

 whole life of the tree. When you are getting a big crop of 

 fruit I do not think that all peach growers are aware what a 

 drain the trees and the crop are upon the soil. I do not be- 

 lieve that tobacco will draw any greater quantity of water 

 from the soil than peach trees with a big crop of fruit on 

 them. The reason why I think so is because where you pull 

 up an old orchard the land will not grow anything unless you 

 give it a lot of fertilizer. I think in any case that we can pro- 

 duce a good growth if we only feed the trees properly, and I 

 do not believe in putting on simply a hit-or-miss lot of fertili- 

 zer. As I said before, there is some guesswork to it. but 

 your experience and watching the orchards is usually a pretty 

 safe guide. I am all the time experimenting to see if I can 

 find out what is the cause of this yellows business. I would 

 like to know what the cause of it is. To illustrate: I had 

 a couple of pieces of not to exceed four or five acres. We did 

 not get any good flavored fruit off those trees. I have been 

 studying, trying to find out what it was that produced that 

 condition. It is fortunate that we had no more trees than we 

 did in that condition. It was evident that they were not right. 

 Something was wrong there. On one little block I gave them 

 a bag of saltpeter. It was no more than I had just done at 

 the same time on these Chairs Choice, but the results were 



