limbs, cones and debris generally give fertility ©noiiah to tbo soil to 

 grow cnibs — either thc^ pine scrub, the hickory scrub or some other 

 form . 



PINEAPPLE LAND. 



In pineapple growing as in other forms of horticulture the tiller of 

 the soil has had to learn by dear experience what kind of land was best 

 adapted to this particuhir crop. Onr veteran pineapple grower, Captain 

 Richards, has told us repeatedly how he niteinpted to grow pineapples 

 upon the moist and fertile island soil. Finally "anding in failure and 

 almost despair, he planted a ew upon the sandridge on the west bank 

 of Indian river at Eden. To his surprise this soil proved exactly what 

 the pines wanted. From this small beginning we may say that prac- 

 tically the whole pineapple industry on the spruce pine land of tbo 

 Indian river section had its origin. 



FERTILIZERS. 



In visiting the various ^tions of the Indian river country during 

 1897 diligent inquiries were made of the principal pineapple growers as 

 to what forms of fertilizer they would recommend for use on pineapples. 

 The enquiry ended in finding out t.hiit v(>ry few people agreed on using 

 the same fertilizing substances. Those who mixed their own fertilizers 

 seemed to be as much in doubt in regard to the action of particular sub- 

 stances as any one else. By far the greiter number of f'ineapple 

 growers, however, seemed to be depending upon ready mixed formulae 

 for their use, the composition of these being in no case known. While 

 the fertilizer houses always appended the percentage of nitrogen, potash 

 aad phosphoric acid present, the:e was no evidence as to the origin of 

 the nitrogen, potash or phosphoric acid. 



A few points m connection witii fertilizing pineapples set m to be 

 admitted by a considerable number of pineapple growers. However, 

 there was no one form of nitrogen which was accepted by a majority of 

 the extensive growers ; and the same was true of potash and phosphoric 

 acid. It was not difficult to find pineapple growers of more than local 

 reputation who would condemn a certain form or forms of ammonia, 

 and their neighbours would condemn certain other forms and probably 

 advocate the use of the forms condemned by the first neighbour. By 

 compiling the opinion of various growers every form of ammonia was 

 condemned and the opposite of the proposition was also true ; that is, 

 every form of ammonia had its advocates. The same was true of potash 

 Acid phosphate was quite generally considered a bad fertilizer. Of 

 course everybody fertilized and everybody was dissatisfied with the 

 action of certain forms of fertilizers. Very few were entirely satisfied 

 with the forms of fertilizer that they were using,and the greater number 

 of those who were satisfied with their fertilizer were people who had not 

 been in the pineapple business very long. 



OBJECTS OF THE EXPERIMENTS, 



At this juncture the Experiment Station oflered to set aside a cer- 

 tain amount of money from the Hatch fund to conduct experiments on 

 a sufficiently extensive scale that they might be of value to the pineapple 



