Tenth Annual Meeting 193 



Mr. Bliss: ''Not specially constructed with points, no. 

 You can dig all you want to with the ordinary harrow of that 

 style. You can kill a pair of horses easy enough." 



The President: "To accommodate our speakers we de- 

 ferred one of the subjects on the program, and it will now be 

 taken up by Dr. Jenkins." 



EXPERIMENTS IN FERTILIZING ORCHARDS 



BY DR. E. H. JENKINS, Director Conn. Experiment Station 



Every fruit-grower in this state is an experimenter. To be 

 successful he has to experiment with soils, with fertilizers and 

 with varieties of fruit. Almost every pomological meeting and 

 farm institute brings out the fact that even within the limits 

 of this little state the same given variety, — particularly of small 

 fruits, — with the same handling and care, does not give the 

 same results. The hardiness, productiveness and keeping quali- 

 ties of a given berry are not the same in different sections of 

 the state. 



Each grower has to make his own tests for his own peculiar 

 conditions, and the general experience of other successful grow- 

 ers has to be supplemented and corrected by his own individual 

 observation. 



Fruit-growers have been generous with the Station in coope- 

 rating in its work. 



During this last year two prominent peach -growers have 

 allowed us to carry on spraying experiments in their orchards 

 which have settled certain points of general value — but at a 

 distinct loss of crop to these individuals. 



Some time I hope that the Station may have an experimental 

 orchard of its own, where we may do as we like without the 

 embarrassment of feeling that we are trespassing on the good 

 nature of our neighbors or doing anything which may make 

 their year's work less profitable. 



Experimenting is expensive work, as you all know. It is not 

 a money -making business usually for the experimenter. 



It was charged recently in one of our papers that the Station 

 had not made a single experiment on its tobacco field which the 



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