140 GRAFT AGE. 



the peaches and plums ; but any ordinary soil, cultivated as 

 nursery lands are, should easily furnish in three years ten 

 times the plant food used by the trees. In order to com- 

 pare the drafts made by nursery stock and some of the 

 common crops raised in mixed husbandry, the following 

 statement will be useful : The amount of green corn neces- 

 sary to remove an equal amount of fertilizing ingredients 

 per acre, taking the average of the value of the nitrogen, 

 phosphoric acid and ^potash (14.72) removed by an acre of 

 the trees (3 years' growth), would be 4,779 pounds. 



"Ensilage corn raised in drills usually yields from 12 to 

 20 tons per acre, and yet does not make drafts on the land 

 which preclude duplicating the yield the following sea- 

 son ; hence some other cause than soil exhaustion must be 

 found if the failure to grow a second crop of nursery trees 

 without intermediate crops is explained." 



All experience proves that a crop of nursery trees does 

 not exhaust the land of its fertility. In fact, it is generally 

 considered that land from which trees have just been re- 

 moved is in the very best condition for a crop of beans, 

 wheat or potatoes. Yet, despite this fact, it is also gener- 

 ally considered that land can seldom raise two good 

 crops of nursery trees in succession. Land which has been 

 "treed" must be "rested" in grass 'or some other crop. 

 This disposition of land to refuse to grow two consecutive 

 crops of good trees is not an invariable rule, however. 

 The writer has known nursery land to produce good plum 

 trees for twenty consecutive years. One frequently sees 

 lands producing apple and cherry stocks for two or three 

 crops in succession. Plums seem to be particularly amena- 

 ble to this consecutive cropping, and they are benefited by 

 applications of stable manure. Some other species, as, for 

 example, the pear, do not take so kindly to treatment with 

 manure. Because of this common experience with indiffer- 

 ent trees grown upon treed land, nurserymen with a large 

 business prefer to rent land for the growing of trees. In 

 New York state, the common period of rental is five years, 



