Dynamite Method is More Productive 

 Results of Blasting on Rose Cliff Fruit Farm 



Dynamite Kills Fungus Diseases Makes Trees Grow Twice as Fast 



Having learned that Mr. James Craig, President of the Rose Cliff 

 Fruit Farm of Waynesboro, Va., had been using dynamite in the tree 

 planting and regeneration work in his extensive orchards for several 

 years, we sent an investigator to obtain his views. The following is 

 a report of the interview : 



Mr. Craig is a very progressive fruit grower. He is one of the 

 first among Eastern orchardists to employ orchard heaters ; as a result 

 of this enterprise the fruit on his trees was saved in the spring of 

 1911, when a heavy frost killed all other fruit in the neighborhood. 

 Mr. Craig has also used dynamite for killing fungus diseases in the 

 ground under and around old trees which have died of fungus diseases. 

 As a result, he has been able to use the ground for replanting, some- 

 thing which has been considered inadvisable previously. 



Our representative obtained a number of photographs of trees on 

 Mr. Craig's property, some of which we reproduce in this booklet. 



Figure 40 shows a six-year-old apple tree planted in ground pre- 

 pared by exploding a half cartridge of 40% strength Dynamite at a 

 depth of eighteen inches. 



Figure 39 shows a view of another tree planted in the same month 

 of the same year by the ordinary method of digging a hole with spade 

 and pick. By comparing the height of this tree with the man holding 

 an eight foot rod in his hand, also shown in each picture, the difference 

 in the size of the trees can easily be seen. 



Figure 47 shows a nine-year-old tree planted in ground prepared 

 by blasting a half cartridge of 40% strength Dynamite at a depth of 

 eighteen inches. Figure 46 shows a nine-year-old tree planted in a 

 spade-dug hole. The two trees just referred to are not 200 feet apart. 



The soils in both plots shown are practically identical ; the trees in 

 these orchards are both of the same species of apple; but, as will be 

 noted from the photographs, the trees planted with dynamite show very 

 good growth, whereas the trees which were not planted with dynamite 

 show up poorly. 



In February of 1911 Mr. Craig did some blasting in his orchard, 

 midway between his trees, with a view of loosening up the soil. He 

 used in each hole one-half cartridge of 40% Red Cross Extra Dyna- 

 mite, exploded at a depth of eighteen inches. One of the objects of 

 this blasting was to break up some shale, underlying a great many of 

 the trees and preventing the deep growth of the roots. To see what 

 results these blasts accomplished, some of the soil was afterwards dug 

 out with shovels. It was discovered that the ground had been broken 

 up at a radius of from six and one-half to eight and one-half feet 

 from the point of the blast, thus giving the tree roots an opportunity 

 for deeper and more healthy expansion. 



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