109 



A Member. What about the excess of phosphoric 

 acid? 



Professor Pickett. It gives the poorest results. An ex- 

 cess of potash gives slightly better than the excess of nitro- 

 gen, but not much; and I might say we got scarcely any 

 better colored fruit where we applied excess potash than 

 we did where other fertilizers were applied. 



The President. A few moments more for questions. 

 Any further questions? 



A member. I would ask the Professor if he would 

 please repeat what fertilizer he used with best results? 



Professor Pickett. Well, I said I hated to recommend 

 one as giving best results. I think I can recommend a bet- 

 ter one. This one that gave us the best results consisted of 

 150 pounds nitrate of soda, 400 pounds of acid phosphate 

 and 200 pounds of sulphate of potash to the acre. We 

 worked these out, of course, for our purposes, at so much 

 per tree and actually worked it out in the quantities of 

 each element of plant food rather than in the totals. This 

 is for another purpose, but I think I could recommend it 

 better than we are using on that orchard. Of course, those 

 are to show actual effects of each particular element. 



A Member. In regard to plowing, can you get very 

 near the tree with a plow? 



Professor Pickett. We can on this particular orchard. 

 Those pictures I showed of the trees and the grass and sod 

 were taken in that orchard, they were high up so that there 

 was no difficulty in getting right up to them. 



A Member. I would like to ask if those apples that 

 were grown on cultivated land were any better color than 

 those on grass or sod? 



Professor Pickett. Just such color as these are; just 

 exactly the color. They didn't average up as big as those 

 are, though. 



A Member. I would like to ask if the gentleman can 

 give any scientific reason why fruits grown on cultivated 

 land will drop much earlier than on sodded land. 



Professor Pickett. Yes I can give you quite a number 

 of reasons why that is so. They don.t apply in 

 each case. On cultivated soil along about the middle of 

 the summer after you get showers or something of that 

 kind there in a heavy growth of small fibrous roots near the 



