FIFTEENTH ANNUAL MEETING. i6l 



grower that has his market so near that he don't have to 

 car his fruit is very fortunate, because when the railroad 

 handles our fruit, it seems as if they thought it was all pig 

 iron. The way they have of coupling cars now with the 

 automatic coupler, they bump their cars pretty hard, and 

 it is almost impossible to load a car without nailing the bas- 

 kets to the floor, unless you want to have them all upset. The 

 last car of peaches I shipped this year, I sent to Providence, 

 and it was just what I could put in on the floor of an ordinary 

 box car. I had the baskets covered ; they were all put in 

 snug, but they were not nailed in, and the man to whom 

 I consigned them called me up over the wire and said there 

 were but fifteen baskets right side up in the car when it 

 arrived, and of course, it resulted in much loss. In shipping 

 peaches under those conditions, if there are a few ripe ones 

 in the basket, the hard ones will dent the ripe ones, so they 

 will be almost as bad as if they were rotten, and when they 

 arrive at their destination the buyers won't take them. 



The matter of fertilizers, I should like to ask Mr. Hale 

 to tell us about. He has been very successful in growing 

 crimson clover almost every year, and I am going to ask him 

 how much fertilizer he has to use to supplement the crim- 

 son clover in growing his big crops of peaches. 



Mr. Hale : That is a difficult question to answer, ofT-hand. 

 I have always given the orchards all I thought they could 

 stand, and sometimes more than my pocketbook would stand, 

 but I have been a liberal feeder of potash and phosphoric acid. 

 no specific amount to each acre, but perhaps some have had 

 more than others, but take one year with another, perhaps 400 

 pounds of muriate of potash and 800 or 1,000 pounds of 

 fine ground bone, or its equivalent. I find we can't grow 

 peaches without furnishing material to feed them with. 



Mr. Lyman : In your large crop of last year, did you find 

 it necessary to use any nitrogen besides what you got in your 

 clover ? 



Mr. Hale : We did use some ; I don't know whether it 

 is always necessary or not. but there Avas an enormous crop 

 «n the trees, and I did use some nitrate of potash. 



