52 Maine; agricultural experiment station. 1915. 



expect to be the case, that sulphate of iron applied to potato 

 vines is sufficiently injurious to the vines to render it an imprac- 

 ticable method of fighting wild mustard. 



Fertilizer Experiments on Apple Trees at Highmoor Farm. 



As it ia pretty generally known, when the State purchased 

 Highmoor Farm it had something over 3500 apple trees upon it. 

 These trees were about twenty-five years old, but for the most 

 part had been completely neglected, as regards pruning, fertil- 

 ization, culture and spraying. The first season that the Station 

 had the farm the orchards were plowed, cultivated and sprayed. 

 Pruning was begun and has been continued until at the present 

 time the orchards are in pretty fair shape. It was, of course, 

 not desirable or practical to thin the trees out at the start to 

 where they should be at the end, but the pruning while rather 

 severe each year has been gradually decreased in amount. 



The orchards were annually fertilized at the rate of 1000 

 pounds per acre of a commercial fertilizer carrying 4 per cent 

 of nitrogen, 8 per cent of available phosphoric acid and 7 per 

 cent potash. At the end of the third year the orchards had so 

 far responded that they gave a good crop and since that time 

 fertilizer experiments have been carried on in various portions 

 of the orchards, as follows : 



The use of highly nitrogenous fertilizers have been advocated 

 as a means of forcing trees into bearing and in some parts of 

 the State has been tried with results that seemed to be gratify- 

 ing. This method was first suggested by Doctor Fisher of 

 Massachusetts and was tried by the Station several years ago in 

 cooperative work with Mr. Pope in his orchard at Manchester 

 without very decisive results. At Highmoor Farm a row of 32 

 Baldwin trees was divided into three sections. The trees were 

 treated alike so far as the application of standard fertilizer was 

 concerned, but ten of the trees at each end of the row received 

 in addition nitrate of soda at the rate of 100 pounds per acre. 

 Also the Baldwin orchard was divided into two parts so that 

 part of it received the usual treatment and in addition received 

 100 pounds of nitrate of soda per acre per year. No differences 

 that could be attributed to the additional nitrate of soda have 

 been observed. 



