182 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



we in the east must remember that the experiments were 

 generally tried with irrigated vines, which is quite a differ- 

 ent matter. The common fear that the vine will not get 

 the full benefit of manure unless it is placed immediately 

 at the hill is wrong. Get hold of a mature cantaloupe vine 

 and work the main roots carefully out of the soil. You will 

 find them longer than the vines. The writer has frequently 

 dissected a root out of the ground between 4 and 5 feet 

 long, without getting to the end of it. These feed roots 

 reach everywhere, and on account of their length the melon 

 vine can go farther than most plants in search of food. Lo- 

 cating the roots in this way will teach another lesson, which 

 is that they are not far below the surface, and the cultivator 

 must be set accordingly. 



With chemical fertilizers experiments show interesting va- 

 riations. Among the large growers in the irrigated sections 

 of the west the use of such fertilizers in the hill has been 

 attended with serious hazard, while under New England 

 conditions the plan has often succeeded. But it must be 

 thoroughly mixed with the soil or it is liable to burn the 

 tender plants so that they seem to go back into the ground, 

 or even fail to come up at all, the strong chemicals destroy- 

 ing the sprouting seed. A good way is to make a shallow 

 furrow and scatter the fertilizer with a McWhorter sower, 

 and then scratch it in with a light cultivator or some such 

 tool. 



The writer has used a mixture analyzing nitrogen 5 per 

 cent, phosphoric acid 7 per cent, and potash 9 per cent, 

 generally hand-mixed, as follows: — 



Sulphate potash (high grade), 



Nitrate soda, 



Sulphate ammonia, 



High-grade tankage (9 to 10 per cent nitrogen and 4 to 6 per 



cent phosphoric acid), 



Acid phosphate (16 per cent), 



Pounds. 



360 

 150 

 100 



oSO 

 810 



Total, 2,000 



From 800 to 1,000 pounds of this mixture per acre should 

 be applied. 



