370 CROP GROWING AND CROP FEEDING 



year or two of substitution of the chemicals for the stable manure will have 

 the happiest effect. Still, since in the home garden we depend upon the 

 stable manure to keep up our humus supply, we must soon return to the 

 manure pile, though we may still supplement its deficiencies with phosphatic 

 and potassic additions. 



29. In the orchard, during the formative period of the trees, we want 

 :i good and well balanced growth, but not too rank a one to induce weakness 

 and disease. Orchards planted on old and worn soils will need, during their 

 early years, a complete fertilizer. There is no objection to the use of stable 

 manure on the young orchard, provided it is supplemented by a liberal 

 application of phosphoric acid and potash to complete and finish the growth 

 induced by the nitrogenous material. After the first few years there will be 

 plenty of nitrogenous matter added to the soil, in the legumes which should 

 be annually plowed under during the period in which the orchard is kept in 

 cultivation. 



30. Of late there has been so much written in regard to the necessity 

 for continuous cultivation of apple and pear orchards, that one who does not 

 agree with these writers is apt to be considered heterodox on the subject of 

 fruit growing. Those who insist on the cultivation of orchards during their 

 whole life, have usually gotten their ideas from seeing the ill success of 

 orchards in sod, from which a crop of hay is annually taken and no fer- 

 tilizing matter returned to the soil. Such orchards fail as a matter of course. 

 Meeting recently at a fruit growers meeting in Virginia with Mr. Van 

 Alsteyne, of the New York Farmers Institutes, we were happy to know that 

 as a practical fruit grower he had found by experience that it is best to keep 

 a bearing apple orchard in grass, if the grass is kept for the benefit of the 

 trees only. His orchard in grass has given better crops than cultivated 

 orchards in the same section. Cultivation and the turning under of humus- 

 making crops is all right during the forming of the tree. Growth is then 

 what we want, but rapid growth is not favorable to early bearing, and we 

 check this by putting the trees in grass and then either mow the grass two or 

 three times during the season and allow it to rot on the land, or allow pigs 

 with jewelled noses to ramble in the orchard and destroy the wormy fruit. 

 At the same time we must remember that the mineral elements must be main- 

 tained in the soil through annual applications of phosphoric acid and potash, 

 for a fair crop of apples will carry off three times or more of potash than a 

 crop of wheat of 20 bushels per acre, while the maturing of the wood requires 

 a large additional amount. 



31. In the North, where snows come heavily, the apple trees may be 

 better trained with a central leading shoot in the head, but in the South, a 



