Fertilizing the Orchard 85 



ingredients removed by fruit, leaf growth, and for 

 the leaching due to irrigation and rain. Citrus in 

 their young state require a considerable amount of 

 nitrogen, hence they are benefited by dressings of 

 such nitrogenous manures as sulphate of ammonia, 

 blood manure, nitrate of soda and stable manure ; 

 when they come into bearing greater applications 

 of potash and phosphates are necessary. As citrus 

 trees are evergreen a considerable amount of root 

 activity is always going on, therefore there should 

 always be sufficient available plant food in the soil 

 for the roots to feed on. One of the best manures 

 for this purpose is bone dust, which gives up its 

 plant food slowly and will generally last for a year 

 or longer, before all its manurial properties have 

 been given off. 



Theoretically, although citrus, as well as other 

 classes of fruit do not remove a very large quantity 

 of phosphoric acid from the soil, nevertheless in 

 practice it is found one of the most beneficial man- 

 ures to use, even in considerable quantities. This 

 is probably partly due to the fact that many of our 

 soils are comparatively poor in phosphates, and so 

 need this substance to give good returns, and also 

 partly to the fact that if one plant food is present in 

 the soil in large quantities so as to be easily assimi- 

 lated by the roots of the plants, the energy of the 

 roots is thereby set free to gather in the other ingre- 

 dients they require. And as phosphate is the cheap- 

 est of all our artificial fertilizers, the soil can be kept 

 well supplied with this substance at comparatively 

 little cost. 



For this reason citrus plantations can with ad- 

 vantage be given a good dressing of phosphates, and 

 an annual application of 3 cwt. bone dust, 2 cwt. 

 superphosphate, with 2 cwt. potash would not be 

 too much to give trees when in full bearing. In 



