130 MASSACHUSETTS HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY 



crops that can be grown on the farm. We have found crops of 

 buckwheat and soy beans very satisfactory, and a third one, which 

 is very seldom mentioned, but which we find to be decidedly satis- 

 factory, is the ordinary pea bean, the "Boston baked bean". 

 So much for cultivation. I have taken the crop end of it. So 

 far as cultivation itself is concerned in the orchard, it is of course 

 necessary to make it thorough, and to use the kind of tools among 

 the trees that will not in any way injure them. 



Next the question of fertilizing. If you have been following the 

 agricultural papers for the last year carefully, you know that there 

 has been a great deal of discussion on this question of fertilizing, 

 and that the Experiment Station, at Geneva, New York, has come 

 out with a bulletin, showing that under their conditions they have 

 not gained enough from fertilizing the orchard to pay for the 

 application of the fertilizing material, let alone the labor of doing 

 it and the cost of the material. Professor Hedrick, the horticul- 

 turist there, is very strongly against the indiscriminate fertilizing 

 of orchards and probably rightly so. Against that is the Pennsyl- 

 vania Station which has come out with practically just the reverse 

 result. I want to read just a line or two from the Pennsylvania 

 results. I am reading the Pennsylvania results, because that is 

 the result that I believe in most strongly. If you are interested 

 in "no fertilization" I will refer you to Professor Hedrick. In 

 this Pennsylvania experiment, which was largely a cooperative 

 experiment among farmers, they found that fertilization gives 

 from three to fourteen times as much fruit as no fertilization. In 

 one case there was a gain of 868 bushels at a cost of $14. an acre 

 for fertilizers. Professor Stewart, who writes this article, closes 

 in this way, " We believe there is no reasonable possibility that 

 these results are due to any other agent than fertilizer. The 

 results stop abruptly where the fertilizer was not used." 



Now, I don't see how anyone is going to get around these re- 

 sults; where you fertilize one block and do not fertilize another 

 block, and you find that the fertilized block gives more than the 

 other, it seems to me that there is no conclusion which you can 

 reach except that the fertilizer is a good thing. And to support 

 this further you will find, I think, take the country through, that 

 the man who persistently fertilizes, using the right kind of ferti- 



