NURSERY MANAGEMENT 275 



Commercial fertilizers may often be applied to nursery 

 stock with profit. Usually nitrogen is needed in liberal 

 supply to insure strong growth. Considerable quantities 

 can be secured from legumes, hence the advisability of 

 growing a crimson clover cover crop. W^hen the trees 

 are showing yellowish leaves on poor spindling growth, 

 a top-dressing of nitrate of soda or sulphate of ammonia, 

 about 300 pounds an acre, during late spring or early 

 summer, will help matters considerably, but the tillage 

 should be good so the soil nitrogen may be utilized 

 first. Nitrogenous fertilizers must be used with great 

 caution, otherwise they may force too succulent a growth. 

 This, especially if produced near the close of the season, 

 might not ripen. The trees would thus be subject to 

 winter injury, they would transplant with greater diffi- 

 culty and be unsatisfactory to the planter. 



370. Winter protection of nurseries. — From over 100 

 replies to queries concerning behavior of nursery stock in 

 a very severe winter in the Northwest states and adjacent 

 Canada it is deduced that the results of injuries suggest 

 d) the value of snow as a covering for nursery stock, (2) 

 the advisability of planting nurseries as far as practicable 

 on north slopes, (3) interspersing nursery blocks with 

 evergreen windbreaks extending east and west. Next to 

 snow as a cover is litter, for which oats, buckwheat, peas, 

 vetches, or mammoth clover are advised as catch crops, 

 the clover only for wet seasons. 



371. Storing nursery stock in frost-proof winter quar- 

 ters is popular with a majority of the large nurseries, 

 because it is believed that the stock is in better condition 

 to thrive when dug in the fall and stored at an even tem- 

 perature approximating the freezing point than when 

 allowed to stand in the nursery and be subjected to wide 

 temperature fluctuations. Besides this is the great ad- 

 vantage that packing may be done under favorable con- 

 ditions. But whether the trees are actually better when 

 they reach the fruit grower is an undecided point. 



