Edible Products, 



538 



[Junk 1&08. 



oughly and deeply forked in, is of con- 

 siderable value, aud gives results that 

 compare very favourably with mineral 

 and chemical fertilizers. 



Mr. Jones' paper on the grafting of 

 cacao, and the paper read by Mr. Moore 

 on experimeutal work at St. Lucia, will 

 be reprinted in the next number of the 

 Agricultural News. — Agricultural Neivg, 

 Vol. VII, No. 152, February 22, 1908. 



THE COCONUT WITH REFERENCE 

 TO ITS PRODUCTS AND CULTIVA- 

 TION IN THE PHILIPPINES. 



Manuring.* 

 The manuring problem must be met 

 and solved bv the best resources at our 

 command. The writer has had pointed 

 out hundred of trees that, wholly guilt- 

 less of auy direct application of manure, 

 have borne excellent crops for many 

 successive years ; but he has also seen 

 hundreds of others in their very prime, 

 at thirty years, which once pro luced a 

 hundred select nuts per year, now pro- 

 ducing fluctuating and uncertain crops 

 of fifteen to thirty inferior fruits. 



Time and again native growers have 

 told me of the large aud uniformly con- 

 tinuous crops of nuts from the trees 

 immediately overshadowing their dwell- 

 ings and, although some have attributed 

 this to a sentimental appreciation and 

 gratitude on the part of the palm at 

 being made one of the family 6f the 

 owner, a few were sensible enough to 

 realize that it came of the opportunity 

 that those particular trees had to get 

 the manurial benefit of the household 

 sewage and waste. 



Yet, the lesson is still unlearned and, 

 after much diligent inquiry, I have yet 

 to find a nut grower in the Philippines 

 who at any time (except at planting) 

 makes direct and systematic application 

 of manure to his trees. 



In India., Ceylon, the Penang Penin- 

 sula, and Cochin China, where the tree 

 has been cultivated for generations, the 

 most that was ever attempted until very 

 recently was to throw a little manure 

 in the hole where the tree was planted, 

 and for all future time to depend on the 

 inferior, grass-made droppings of a few 

 cattle tethered among the trees, to com- 

 pensate for the half million or more nuts 

 that a hectare of fairly productive trees 

 should yield during their normal bear- 

 ing life. 



•Throughout this paper the 'writer uses this 

 word in preference" to " fertilizing "t even's when 

 speaking of so-called* " commercial fertilizers." 



Upon suitable coconut soils— i.e., those 

 that are light and permeable — commou 

 salt is positively injurious. In support 

 of this contention, I will state that salt 

 in solution will break up and freely 

 combine with lime, making equally 

 soluble chloride of lime which, of course, 

 freely leach out in such a soil and carry 

 down to unavailable depths these salts, 

 invaluable as necessary bases to render 

 assimilable most plant foods ; and that, 

 on this account, commercial manures 

 containing large amounts of salt are 

 always to be used with much discretion, 

 owing to the dauger of impoverishing 

 the supply of necessary lime in the soil. 



Finally, so injurious is the direct 

 application of salt to the roots of most 

 plants that the invariable custom of 

 trained planters (who, for the sake of 

 the potash contained, are compelled to 

 use crude Stassfuft mineral manures, 

 which contain large quantities of com- 

 mon salt) is to apply it a very consider- 

 able time before the crop is planted, in 

 order that this deleterious agent should 

 be well leached and washed away from 

 the immediate field of root activity. 



That the coconut is able to take up 

 large quantities of salt may not be dis- 

 puted. That the character of its root is 

 such as to enable it to do so without the 

 injury that would occur to most culti- 

 vated plants I have previously shown, 

 while the history of the coconut's inland 

 career, and the records of agricultural 

 chemistry, both conclusively point to 

 the fact that its presence is an incident 

 that in no way contributes to the health, 

 vigor, or fruitf illness of the tree. 



Mr. Cochran's analysis, based upon the 

 unit of 1,000 average nuts, weighing in 

 the aggregate 3,125 pounds, discloses a 

 drain upon soil fertility for that number, 

 amounting in round numbers to — 



Pounds. 



Nitrogen ... ... 8£ 



Potash ... ... 17 



Phosphoric acid ... ... 3 



Reducing this to crop and area, and 

 taking sixty fruits per annum per tree as 

 a fair mean tor the bearing groves in our 

 coconut districts and on those rare 

 estates where a systematic spacing of 

 about 173 trees to the hectare has been 

 made, we should have an annual harvest 

 of 10,300 nuts, or, stated in round num- 

 bers, 10,000, which will exhaust each year 

 from the soil a total of— 



Pounds. 



Nitrogen ... ... 82£ 



Potash 1/0 



Phosphoric acid... .. 30 



