The Canadian Horticulturist. 211 



FERTILIZERS FOR FRUITS. 



\ Vti/R ITERS in the rural press tell what little effects they have had from 

 YY applications of bone dust or other plain phosphates in the orchard, 

 vineyard or small fruit patch. This is very natural. All fruits and 

 fruit crops require more potash than phosphoric acid, and even where they 

 apparently are doing well, they will usually do still better when more potash 

 is applied. For this reason, bone dust and the like alone are not what is 

 wanted. Add plenty of unleached wood ashes, corn-cob ashes, cotton-seed 

 hull ashes, muriate of potash, or kainit, and you will not be likely to com- 

 plain of the ineffectiveness of the application. Let fruit growers understand 

 this thoroughly. Simple phosphates are no manure for fruit crops, and 

 never will be. Potash, on the other hand, in any of the forms named, can- 

 not well be applied in too large doses for fruits. Lots of potash makes bush 

 and tree fruits firmer, sweeter, better in flavor, renders the wood more 

 resistent to wind and weather, and is a benefit to them generally, and this 

 without a single drawback. Potash also improves the quality of potatoes, 

 beets, turnips, etc. 



This is now pretty generally recognized. The way that our leading 

 fertilizer men put up their various brands for special crops is a pretty good 

 indication of what they think about this subject. There is, for instance, 

 Mr. Mapes' " Fruit and Vine " manure. An average of several analysis 

 gives it 2-50 per cent, of nitrogen, 10-20 per cent, of phosphoric acid and 

 1071 per cent, of potash. Evidently Mr. Mapes (and he is most excellent 

 authority) thinks that potash is the most important of the plant foods in a 

 fertilizer for fruits. The only crop for which he uses a still slightly larger 

 percentage of potash is tobacco. The demands of this crop for potash are 

 simply enormous and even ruinous. The soil in Virginia and elsewhere, 

 impoverished by long cropping with tobacco, will not be restored to fertility 

 by applications of simple phosphates. Potash alone can help them. For 

 soils in this condition, let our Virginia friends try muriate of potash or 

 kainit, or cotton-seed hull ashes, etc. Of course, barn-yard manure in large 

 enough quantities will also have good effect. — Joseph, in Farm and Fireside. 



THE HOUSE SPARROW. 



I NOTICED recently, in a local paper, an extract from an Australian 

 paper, condemning the English sparrow as a nuisance, and was to the 

 effect that the insect pest there was mcreasing to an alarming extent* 

 and the cause was attributed to the decrease of native insectivorous birds, 



