82 Success with Small Fruits. 



strawberries and raspberries. Since that time, we have used nothing but ground 1 

 bone and muriate of potash to manure all of our berry fields with, and continue to 

 get fully as satisfactory results as in former years, when we depended upon stable 

 manure at more than double the cost per acre. Some parties who have been look- 

 ing into the matter suggest that possibly our satisfactory results are owing not so 

 much to the fertilizers as to the liberal supply of stable manure used in former years. 

 Yet the past season we picked 143 bushels of Charles Downings per acre, from a 

 field manured with bone and potash, so poor and worn out that, two years before, it 

 would only produce six bushels of rye per acre. That land had no stable manure 

 on it, and if it was not the bone and potash that furnished food for the berries, we 

 would like to know what it was. The one mistake we have made is, I think, in not 

 using six or eight hundred pounds offish scrap or guano, and only 1,500 pounds of 

 bone. The fish or guano, being such quick-acting fertilizers, would give the plants a 

 much better start early in the season than would be the case if only the bone and 

 potash were used. We shall try it the coming spring. In applying the potash, great 

 care should be taken to have it thoroughly incorporated with the soil, it being only 

 about 55 per cent, actual potash; the balance, being largely composed of salt, would, 

 of course, kill the roots of young plants if brought directly in contact with them. 

 In fields where we have used the potash, we have been troubled with white grubs. 

 only to a very limited extent, while portions of the same field where stable manure 

 had been used were badly infested with them, and while I do not think salt will 

 drive them all out of the soil, I do believe it will do so to some extent. Besides 

 the fertilizers I have named, we have in the past six years experimented in a small 

 way with many others. Among them, Stockbridge's strawberry manure and Mapes' 

 fruit and vine manures, but have never had as good returns for the money invested 

 as from the bone and potash ; and yet, while they have proved of such great value to. 

 us, I would not advise you or any one to give up stable majiure for them if you can 

 get it at the same cost per acre, but if you cannot, then I say try bone dust and 

 potash in a small way, until you learn just what your soil wants, and then supply 

 it whether it be 500, 1,000, or 2,000 pounds per acre." 



Mr. Hale adds: 



" The most of our soil is a sandy loam. We have some heavy loam and a few 

 acres of clay gravel, and we have always had good results from the use of bone and 

 potash on all of these soils. 



" We have never used lime on our berry fields at the time of planting, and yet, 

 as you know, all of our New England soils are deficient in lime. We use some 

 indirectly, as we grow clover to plow under, and usually give at that time a good 

 dressing of lime. As we try to have a new clover field every year, we get all 

 around the farm in six or eight years, and we therefore get a dressing of lime all 

 around once in that time, and have never been able to see any ill effects from it. In 

 fact, we believe it a positive benefit in helping to keep down sorrel, if nothing 

 more." 



There would be very few worn-out farms, or poverty-stricken farmers, 

 if all followed the example of the Hale brothers. 



