EXPERIMENTAL PROOF 101 



value of an acre of wheat and an acre of apples would be as 



follows : 



Wheat, grain and straw, 20 years $128.23 



Apples, fruit and leaves, 20 years 207.45 



This makes no account of the large amount of fertilizer 

 material which is each year locked up in the roots, trunk, and 

 branches of the tree. Now we must admit at once that the tree 

 forages much more widely than the annual crop in search of 

 food, but even when this is considered it seems reasonably cer- 

 tain that an orchard exhausts the soil faster than the wheat 

 crop. It must be remembered further that there is no chance 

 for rotation of crops with the orchard, but the same elements in 

 the same ratio are taken out year after year. When we remem- 

 ber still further that no man who makes any pretense to being a 

 farmer would think of trying to grow a wheat crop many years 

 without fertilizers, it seems very reasonable that the orchard 

 man should follow the practice of the general farmer. 



Best Orchardists Fertilize. — This brings us to the second 

 reason for thinking that orchards ought to be fertilized, and that 

 is that the best fruit men practise fertilizing. Go into any 

 orchard section and you will find that the most progressive and 

 successful growers, as a rule, are the men who fertilize highly. 

 Usually the man succeeds in proportion as he fertilizes. The 

 man who fertilizes year after year, whetlier he has a crop of fruit 

 on his trees or not, is the man who usually has a crop. The man 

 who is noted in a section as applying fertilizers in large quantity 

 is usually also noted as a man who harvests bumper crops. This 

 is not conclusive proof, because these men also care well for their 

 orchards in other ways. But it is very suggestive, particularly 

 the fact that the generous feeder usually succeeds better than 

 the moderate feeder. 



Experimental Proof. — The third point which has con' erted 

 many to fertilizing their orchards is the fact that numerous 

 experiments have shown such marked benefits from fertilizing. 

 Of course there have been experiments that have not shown any 

 benefit, but when, in a series of experiments, a fertilized block 

 gives several times as much fruit as an unfertilized block, the 



