252 FRUIT AND ITS CULTIVATION. 



CHAPTER V. 



Manuring Garden Trees. 



THIS is a subject of very great importance in relation to 

 the successful cultivation of hardy fruits. Next to skilful 

 planting, pruning, and training, a knowledge of the re- 

 quirements of each kind of fruit, as regards the special 

 food it requires as an aid to successful growth and suc- 

 cessful fruit-bearing, is most essential. The grower, 

 indeed, requires to know the effect of the various manures 

 or fertilisers upon the production of healthy growth and 

 the development of fruits. It is a very easy matter to 

 use manures to excess, and to defeat the very object the 

 grower has in view, and it is equally easy to starve a tree 

 by not giving it the food most suitable for its require- 

 ments. Our duty, then, in this chapter, is to set forth 

 the various facts about manures and manuring in as 

 simple a form as possible, so that mistakes may be 

 avoided and success assured. 



Mistakes Made in Manuring. Novitiates in fruit cul- 

 ture too often make the mistake of imagining that liberal 

 applications of manure will resuscitate a sickly tree, and 

 bring it into a healthy and vigorous condition. Such 

 treatment has, however, quite the opposite effect it 

 hastens the death of the tree. It is far better to uproot 

 and consign such a tree to the fire, and to replace it by a 

 healthy one. 



On the other hand, there are those who imagine that 

 the more you feed a healthy tree with manures the more 

 productive it will be. Here, again, a serious mistake is 

 made. Excessive manuring encourages a tree to make 

 excessive growth and to develop few fruit buds, because 

 the nature of the food supplied is not conducive to the 



