I20 THE CONNECTICUT POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



ence. An orchard yearly takes from the land as much nitro- 

 gen, phosphoric acid and potash as a crop of wheat. There 

 is this diiiference, however, between tree fruits and wheat or 

 other farm crops. Wheat should be grown in rotation with 

 other crops whose demands on soil fertility may be less and 

 surely will be quite different in the proportion of plant food 

 taken from the soil. But the apple orchard makes exactly 

 the same call on the soil from thirty, fifty, or one hundred 

 years running". Suppose that you have a soil in which, let 

 us say, phosphoric acid is rather slowly given up to crops. 

 A crop in a rotation which makes small demand of soluble 

 phosphates we can imagine will make it easier for that soil 

 to meet the heavier demand of a different crop next year. 

 But an orchard soil must be ready with a spot cash payment 

 of the same plant food in the same amount every year. 



This, I think, makes a yearly dressing with soluble fer- 

 tilizers seem very desirable in orchards, unless careful ob- 

 servation of trees tested in the way already suggested in this 

 paper or the judgment of an experienced grower indicates 

 that the land does not need for a time one or another of the 

 fertilizer ingredients. Thus scanty leafage and deficient 

 growth, if the soil water is sufficient, will suggest the use of 

 more nitrogen ; overgrowth or late growth in normal sea- 

 sons will suggest cutting down or omitting fertilizer nitro- 

 gen or, it may be, cutting out the cover crop, or even seeding 

 down for a few years. 



Peaches need more quickly available fertilizers than 

 apples. They must make a full growth in a very few years ; 

 they must pay for themselves within ten or twelve years, and 

 the loss or lessened yield of a single crop, for lack of fer- 

 tility, makes a much greater difference in the total pro-fit 

 of the venture than it does in an apple orchard. The New 

 Jersey experience that generous fertilizing each year count- 

 eracts considerably the loss of fruit in poor years and 

 lengthens considerabh' the bearing life of the tree is very 

 conclusive. 



One thousand pounds of a 2.5-6-7.5 formula of solu- 



