Fertilisers for Market Garden Crops. 481 



The combination of dung and chemical fertilisers here men- 

 tioned is the one which we should generally recommend for 

 strawberries. Potash salts, as far as our experience goes, appear 

 to have been deleterious rather than beneficial to strawberries. 



Kentish Cob-nuts and Damsons. 



We have for a number of years had under experiment a nut 

 and damson plantation on the fruit farm of our friend and neigh- 

 bour, Mr. Godwin, of East Peckham. Here the comparison is 

 not between dung and chemical fertilisers, but between the latter 

 and wool waste, which is the favourite local manure for these fruits. 



The best results have been yielded by a dressing of phosphates,, 

 potash salts and 2 cwt. of nitrate of soda per acre, but the 

 difference in yield on the various plots has not been great. The 

 price obtained for the nuts from the chemically manured plots, 

 however, has been uniformly greater than that realised by the 

 wool-waste-manured nuts, on account of the more luxuriant 

 development in the former case of the "beard" or cupule, which 

 for some real or imaginary reason affects very decidedly the 

 market value of Kentish cob-nuts. 



The damson results have been very irregular, owing to 

 vicissitudes of season. In a good season far better results have 

 been obtained on the plots manured with phosphates, potash 

 salts and nitrate of soda, at the rate of from 2 cwt. to 4 cwt. per 

 acre, than on those left unmanured or manured with wool waste 

 only, or than on those manured only with phosphates and potash 

 salts without nitrogen. 



Superphosphate has been throughout recommended as a phos- 

 phatic dressing. This is always on the assumption that the soil' 

 to be manured contains an appreciable quantity of lime— thit is 

 to say, sufficient carbonate of lime to cause effervescence when 

 a mineral acid is poured upon it. On land poor in lime I should 

 recommend, in substitution of superphosphate, either basic slag, 

 Peruvian guano, fine bone meal, a mixture of superphosphate 

 with bone meal, or the superphosphate neutralised with lime 

 which is now obtainable under the name of "basic superphos- 

 phate " ; or that, at any rate, the use of one or other of these 

 manures should be alternated every other year with that of 

 superphosphate. 



Bernard Dyer, 

 m M 



