August 5, 1891.] 



Garden and Forest. 



37i 



This plan would afford great variety, with harmony in each 

 individual garden, together with endless diversity, as I have 

 indicated above, in each group of gardens included within the 

 hounds of a civil parish, township or county. Thus arranged, 

 each house-lot, as will be seen, would hold out a continuous 

 invitation to the holders of a thousand other house-lots to come 

 in, examine and admire. Each citizen, with kindest intent, 

 would have large interest in the enclosures of all his neigh- 

 bors, far and near; consequently, calls and inspections would 

 ever be in order and never completed, as it would take more 

 than one season — more than two, perhaps — to exhaust the 

 green treasures of a single village only. 



A township-wide garden, of which each lot-holder would be 

 the owner of a fragment, I offer as a new departure for Amer- 

 ican gardening. 



Santa Clara. 



Recent Publications. 



Last year Professor Roberts, of Cornell University, pub- 

 lished a bulletin to show how much loss of fertilizing 

 matter occurred when manure was permitted to lie exposed 

 to the weather for considerable periods of time. The trials 

 which were then made have been repeated, with some varia- 

 tions, and on a larger scale, and Bulletin 17, from the Cornell 

 Experiment Station, is devoted to the same subject. In the 

 trial recorded a pile of two tons of horse-manure and cut 

 straw was accumulated in the latter part of April, and analysis 

 was- then made of the mass. This remained exposed until 

 the middle of September, when it was carefully scraped up, 

 weighed and analyzed by samples. The season was a wet 

 one, and a great deal of loss occurred. The 4,000 pounds of 

 original gross weight had shrunk to 1,730 pounds, and, al- 

 though there was an increase in the percentage of phosphoric 

 acid, and but a slight diminution in the percentage of nitro- 

 gen, the total loss, owing to the general shrinkage, was very 

 great ; that is, of the nitrogen there was a loss of sixty per cent., 

 of phosphoric acid a loss of forty-seven percent., and of potash 

 a loss of seventy-six per cent. Estimating the value of the 

 fertilizing ingredients at current prices, a ton of the original 

 compost was worth $2.80, while the value of what that ton 

 had dwindled to at the close of the experiment was only $1.06, 

 or a loss of 62 per cent, in the fertilizing power of the manure. 

 The loss in this case was more serious than it was last year, 

 owing to the fact, perhaps, that the heap was larger, and, as it 

 contained some straw, there was a greater degree of heating, 

 or what is known to farmers as firefanging. 



A similar experiment was made on a pile of cow-manure, 

 amounting to five tons. The total shrinkage in gross weight 

 was, in this case, about one-half. The loss of nitrogen was 

 forty-one per cent., of phosphoric acid nineteen per cent., and 

 of potash eight per cent., and the value of the manure was 

 depreciated to the amount of about one-third. From this it 

 appears that the waste was only one-half as much as in the 

 case of the horse-manure. One reason for this is, that the 

 fermentation in this case was not sufficiently rapid to cause 

 firefanging. 



From these tests Professor Roberts reaches the following 

 conclusion : " It seems safe to say that under the ordinary con- 

 ditions of piling and exposure the loss of fertilizing material 

 during the course of the summer is not likely to be much be- 

 low fifty per cent, of the value of the manure." Of course the 

 moral of this is to use great care in preserving such fertilizing 

 material for farm orgarden. It is too often the case that farm- 

 yard manures are piled under the eaves of outbuildings or 

 upon a steep hill-side by the borders of a running brook, and 

 this fact is made graphically clear in the bulletin by some pic- 

 tures from actual photographs of country farm-yards. Pro- 

 fessor Roberts recommends cheap buildings or covered yards 

 which will protect the manure from leaching. 



Increased interest would have been given to this bulletin if 

 Professor Roberts had explained where the lost fertilizing ma- 

 terial had gone. The potash cannot evaporate, so that the 

 potash and phosphoric acid must have been carried away in the 

 drainage. It would seem, therefore, that the best way to save 

 these elements would be to spread the manure at once on the 

 surface of the ground where it was needed, so that the soluble 

 salts might be washed into the soil and held there. The most 

 expensive ingredient, however, is the nitrogen, and in the 

 course of fermentation this can pass into the air as ammonia 

 or as a free gas. It would be interesting to know how much 

 of it escaped in the drainage and how much was dissipated in 

 the air. Fermentation to some extent would go on in the ma- 

 nure even under cover, and in some cases this fermentation 

 adds value to the manure. If Professor Roberts continues his 



experiments he could give cultivators some useful informa- 

 tion by ascertaining for them how much in actual weight a ton 

 of manure would lose if kept under cover or in a pit, and what 

 portion of the waste is material which is valuable plant-food. 

 The proper care and the most effective application of manures 

 may be considered the basis of all good agricultural practice, 

 and our experiment stations can do no better work than by 

 making careful researches in this direction. 



Periodical Literature. 



In the August number of The Forum Ex-Governor Sheldon 

 writes on the Profits of Fruit-culture in California, naming as 

 the fruits which are successfully grown in that state the apple, 

 the apricot, the peach, the pear, the plum, the prune, the nec- 

 tarine, the cherry, the fig, the olive, the guava, the loquat, the 

 orange, the lemon, the lime, grapes for the table, for raisins 

 and for wines, the English walnut and the almond. The rich- 

 ness of some of the valleys, where the fertility has been 

 washed down from the mountains for ages, is so great, and 

 the consequent production of all kinds of crops is so abun- 

 dant, that many Californians have been led to believe that this 

 fertility cannot be exhausted. This belief has led to imperfect 

 cultivation and the continuation of successive crops in some 

 places until production has been materially reduced. Vine- 

 yards have borne fruit for a hundred years in some cases with- 

 out any fertilization. The orchards of deciduous fruit are 

 rarely enriched, and Orange-groves have not been fertilized 

 until within ten or fifteen years. Of course, in order to secure 

 future crops, some return must be made to the soil, and culti- 

 vators are now beginning to study methods of cultivation 

 and to make use of both home-made and commercial fer- 

 tilizers with excellent results. 



Perhaps the most instructive part of the article is not the 

 general statement of the large production, but the specific ex- 

 amples cited of the crops which have been produced in differ- 

 ent parts of the state. For example, 250 acres of wine Grape- 

 vines in Los Angeles County have for several years netted 

 their owner $100 an acre. Raisins yield a profit in four counties 

 of from $150 to $400 an acre when the vines are in full bear- 

 ing. Walnut-orchards yield from $200 to $400 per acre when 

 the trees are twenty years old. Seventy-two Fig-trees, planted 

 at the rate of 108 to the acre, have netted the grower $600 a 

 year for four years past, and the same grower has received 

 $150 for the lemons grown on one-third of an acre, although 

 they were not cured, but sold to local dealers. The fruit from 

 thirty-eight acres of Peaches, Apricots and Prunes in Pasadena 

 was sold for $9,294, and the cost of production was $1,000, and 

 in the same place the peaches from one and a half acres sold 

 for $500 on the trees. In San Diego County the prunes from 

 five and a half acres brought $2,600, and the cost of produc- 

 tion and preparation for market was $300. From sixteen acres 

 of Apricots a grower in Azusa received $7,300 net. One acre 

 of Orange-trees in South Pasadena produced in the fourth year 

 after bearing $350, with a cost of production of $36. Last year 

 a grower in Alhambra raised on eight acres 7,000 boxes of 

 oranges, which were sold at $1.35 a box, while trees planted at 

 the rate of 120 to the acre yield at the rate of $4 a tree. In 

 Riverside, the most celebrated place for orange production in 

 the state, the receipts have been as high as $1,200 to the acre, 

 and $400 and upward are not uncommon returns. 



These cases exaggerate general results when the production 

 of all the orchards and vineyards of the state are taken into 

 account, for this includes those which have suffered from 

 neglect and unintelligent management. If these figures are 

 reduced one-half they will still be above the general average 

 production, and then it will be seen that the profits from fruit- 

 culture in California exceed anything that has been achieved 

 elsewhere in the country in horticultural or agricultural pro- 

 duction. 



The great increase of fruit-production within the last few 

 years has raised the question whether there is not danger of 

 over-production in the early future to such an extent that re- 

 duced prices will leave no profits. In proportion to the value 

 of the land and expense of production these profits have been 

 enormous, and prices might be largely reduced before the 

 fruit-industry would cease to be remunerative. But produc- 

 tion is still far below the demand. Peaches, for example, are 

 popular all over the country, while the areas where they have 

 been successfully grown are not increasing in the east. Prunes 

 are raised in several parts of California, and yet the state itself 

 imports them largely. Apricots, figs, raisins, walnuts and 

 olives are only grown in a few places except in the southern 

 half of California, and the wine-grape is cultivated in but a few 

 and restricted districts outside of the state. The orange crop 



