40 



Top Dressing The Mode of Manuring Orchards. 



45. In carrying out the perfect cultivation which is the 

 basis of modern fruit culture, there is abundant scope for 

 private judgment. With one person, winter ploughing and 

 harrowing for the heavier part of the task, followed by the 

 cultivator in one or other of its forms all through the 

 summer, will be preferred, especially where the soil is apt 

 to compact itself.. In. lighter lands the cultivator alone, kept 

 going off and on all the year round, will give the result 

 required with less costly labour. And in performing these 

 duties comes the opportunity for whatever occasional top- 

 dressing the soil may demand. That particular form of 

 manuring, subsequent to whatever has been done during 

 the first trenching up, is the proper way of keeping 

 an orchard in heart and restoring the materials taken out 

 Icy the trees for their substance and their fruit. It must 

 not be done by guess work, or simply from the suggestions 

 in the flaming advertisements of this and that firm's patent 

 manures. It is necessary to find out what constituent of 

 the soil is but poorly represented, and to keep this one in 

 mind in future additions. At the Cape it may truly be 

 said that the great and universal deficiency is phosphates. 

 To the want of phosphates is due lam-ziekte of our cattle 

 and sheep. They positively, on some land, cannot find in 

 the herbage enough lime-phosphate or bone -earth to make 

 their bones strong enough to carry their weight. Also iu 

 many corn lands there is now left the merest trace of phos 

 phates, and the consequent weakened condition of the crop 

 lays it open to destruction by fungus pests which would 

 have been far less damaging to a crop in vigorous health. 

 In many soils, lime is the great deficiency. We bring this 

 needful building material from far, or are driven to use 

 clay in place of it sure proof of our lack of lime. In 

 others potash is the special plant-food scantily furnished. 

 Thus every man has to find out the weak point in the soil 

 he cultivates before he can apply a rational remedy. We 

 have given a list of the elements essential to plant-growth. 

 All these must be had, although in very different pro- 

 portions. Some are present in all soils, even in the most 

 barren. Hence it is fair to say that fertilizing consists in 



