Fertilizing the Commercial Apple Orchard 189 



fruit production. Stable manure not only supplements 

 the available plant-food, but has the additional advantage 

 of keeping the soil " alive " and of adding to its capacity 

 to conserve moisture. It makes the food already in the 

 soil more available and permits freer circulation of air. 



It may be definitely stated that stable manure has given 

 uniformly excellent results in the various commercial dis- 

 tricts throughout the country. (Other fertilizers have not 

 been so widely tested.) Annual application of 8 to 10 

 tons to the acre in a well-managed orchard is usually suffi- 

 cient to secure good annual crops, although a less amount 

 is very beneficial. Some growers prefer to make heavy 

 applications every three or four years, applying from 25 

 to 30 tons to the acre, or from 15 to 20 tons every other 

 year. A few New York growers are the most common 

 practitioners of this method. New York orchards with 

 their large and old trees can utilize profitably a very large 

 amount of plant-food. 



Careful cost-accounting records taken on about 400 farms 

 in the western New York apple belt show that orchards 

 which are given annual applications of manure, and in 

 which leguminous cover-crops are grown, give the highest 

 annual yields and are the most profitable. 



EXPERIMENTS WITH FERTILIZERS 



Research work of Kraus and Kraybill. 



A discussion of fertilizing would not be complete with- 

 out a consideration of the work of Kraus and Kraybill, 

 who have made the most exhaustive research investigation 

 regarding the relation of plant vigor to cultivation and 

 nitrogenous fertilizer. 



