STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 39 



Top dressing- is also beneficial where one is so situated that 

 he can procure manure at a reasonable cost. Cultivation is also 

 to be recommended, where the conditions will admit of it, and 

 the trees do not stand too closely together. As for mulching 

 and cover crops, it is easy to say mulch and write about cover 

 crops, but altogether a dififerent thing to procure the material 

 and do the work. It makes good winter quarters for the ground 

 moles and mice, but I never could see that it did the trees much 

 of anv good. I believe that all methods and experiments should 

 be backed up by facts and figures, as much as possible. Profit 

 and loss are what interest us fruit growers the most. Unfortu- 

 natel}- my orchards all stand in grass land, a part of which is so 

 rocky that it is impossible to plough and cultivate, now that the 

 trees have grown so large and the limbs come so near the ground. 

 In order to fertilize I have resorted to the use of chemicals 

 compounded by a formula of Dr. Fisher, a noted fruit grower, 

 of Fitchburg. ]\Iass. I have only used them three years, but so 

 far they have done all that I claim and more. I gave the results 

 of my first two years' experience in Auburn at our last exhibition 

 and I will not attempt to repeat it here any further than is neces- 

 sary to explain the results of my experiments this season. Those 

 of you that were present at the orchard meeting at my place last 

 year will recollect that on the east side of my main orchard I 

 have a block of just one hundred Baldwin trees consisting of 

 five rows with twenty trees in each row. and that they were all 

 treated alike with the Fisher formula except the middle row 

 where no fertilizers of any sort were applied, with the result as 

 then stated. I wanted to learn what benefit, if any, the last 

 year's application would have on the trees this season without 

 any further fertilizing. I therefore left one row and made no 

 application wdiatever and on the next row, which was fertilized 

 last season, I used eight pounds to the tree, which was two 

 pounds less than I applied last year, with the following result: 

 I picked fourteen barrels of fruit more on the row where I made 

 the application both years than I did on the row where I made 

 one last year. When you come to compare this result with the 

 trees I left in the middle row where I made no application what- 

 ever last season or this, it was as plain as the nose on your face 



