78 FRUIT-GROWING 



offered to them. It may be, too, that the re- 

 sources of the soil are greater than we have 

 supposed and that an apple tree in some way 

 provides for its wants on a diet which would 

 mean starvation to a corn-field. During the 

 last few years nitrate of soda has reached a po- 

 sition of some prominence as an orchard fertil- 

 izer both in experiments and in practice. Its 

 use is increasing steadily year by year and there 

 seems to be well grounded reasons for this pop- 

 ularity. We have used it for three seasons — 

 first in a spirit of investigation and later as a 

 part of our regular practice. When I first ap- 

 plied it around the trees in a seven-year-old 

 block I could not see any great difference in the 

 trees themselves except that the foliage was 

 greener, heavier and hung on the trees later in 

 the fall. The effect on the grass and weeds 

 around the trees was very marked for the fer- 

 tilizer produced a rank growth of vigorous dark 

 green grass. I reasoned that the more grass we 

 could grow the better mulch we would have un- 

 der the trees — just as the Laurel experiment 

 later indicated. The second year in which we 

 used the nitrate we could begin to see re- 

 sults that could not easily be attributed to any 

 other factor. Consequently for the present at 

 least we expect to make the application of ni- 

 trate of soda a regular practice in the orchard. 

 Other growers have had similar results with 



