STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 72) 



Mr. Conant : Now, this may not seem an important question. 

 but it is an important question, and I am glad the brother has 

 asked this question. I will just give all the information I know 

 about it, and then I want to throw it open. I put but very little 

 lime in my orchard, but I have watched and read a great deal 

 about liming the orchard. I listened, when in Connecticut last 

 winter, to a talk by Dr.Wheeler who is considered an authority 

 on lime and liming, and this question was asked of Dr. Wheeler. 

 Should lime be used in the orchard, and how much ? — something 

 like that. And his reply came very readily, "Very little." Now. 

 it seemed that he had been carrying on experiments along this 

 very line, and he finds that in a majority of cases it is detri- 

 mental to the trees ; that an orchard will thrive and do better 

 under perhaps a slightly acid condition than it will with too 

 much lime correcting the acidity, and he advised the growers 

 to be very careful in applying lime in the orchard. There might 

 be extreme cases where it would be advisable to lime the orchard, 

 but to go very carefully, not putting too much lime in the 

 orchard until he knew just what the condition was. This is a 

 very important question. I would like to hear from others. I 

 would like to have volunteer information from the various 

 growers present. I am going to call on Mr. Keyser. 



Mr. Keyser : I have not used lime direct. Where we use 

 barnyard dressing in the orchard, we use, later in the season, 

 basic slag, 500 pounds to the acre. That is our extent on the 

 lime question. We use it with the idea of giving a balance to 

 the dressing. But of course we all know that raising fruit with 

 us on barnyard dressing, continually, more than once in three 

 or four years, we cannot get colored fruit. 



Mr. Fletcher : I think that the experiments that have been 

 made on the use of lime for fruit trees, have shown conclu- 

 sively that they do not need lime as do many crops. On the 

 other hand, we must remember that a large body of the most 

 successful commercial orchards in the country are in that great 

 limestone belt stretching from Pennsylvania, western New York, 

 down to Virginia and southerly, so that the apple tree is cer- 

 tainly tolerant of lime when present in its natural home. We 

 must also remember that we cannot get a good stand, a good 

 growth of the leguminous crops, especially red clover and crim- 

 son clover, unless there is a reasonable amount of lime in the 



