i8o An American Fruit-Farm 



spring opens and the feeding process is active again 

 (it doubtless goes on less actively during the winter) , 

 if food is available, the plant fattens fast. But 

 this plant-food must be in liquid or gaseous form, 

 for the plant-cell cannot absorb solid matter. It is 

 the food already in the soil when spring opens that 

 feeds the plant; therefore it is the food which the 

 fruit-grower has made available long before the 

 feeding process begins. 



It is, as it were, food stored in the soil that feeds 

 orchard and vineyard this year; for this year and 

 next, and years afterward, do we reap the benefit 

 of feeding the soil last year and years before. We 

 feed the soil to-day that it may feed the plant 

 to-morrow. How long will it take the plant-food 

 you scatter on the ground to become available to 

 the plant? Just as long as may be required to 

 make this food supply soluble, — provided it really 

 is plant-food. Iron is an ingredient of wood, but 

 we do not fertilize an apple orchard with nails. 

 The whole problem of soil-making is a problem of 

 available, soluble plant-food. How long does it 

 take a fertilizer to dissolve into invisible moisture 

 and gas? If you can tell, then you know accur- 

 ately when the fertilizer you apply to the land in 

 form of ashes, lime, salts, barnyard mantire, a 

 green crop plowed in as clover, turnips, vetch, 

 soybeans, grass, or weeds, will be fit to feed the 

 plant. We can give a general answer: It will take 

 as long as may be necessary for the fertilizer to 

 become fluid or gas, and this is a chemical process 



