AN APPLE ORCHARD THAT PAYS. 



IN THE face of the fact that the apple crop of the 

 country was practically a failure the past sea- 

 son, it will be interesting, and may be instruc- 

 tive, to note the conditions under which a par- 

 tial exception occurred. 



The orchard referred to contains fifty-five bearing 

 trees, which were set in 1854 at a distance of thirty feet 

 apart, and includes six varieties. The soil is a strong, 

 deep loam on a hard-pan bottom, underlaid with gneiss. 

 Since the trees were large enough, they have borne 

 regularly each even year, and produced from five to 

 twenty per cent, of a full crop in the odd years. The 

 treatment for the past five years has been as follows : 



45 lbs. sulphate of ammonia, 45 lbs. nitrate of soda, 

 45 lbs. sulphate of magnesia ; total, 600 lbs. These in- 

 gredients cost $10.50 at the railroad station. 



Judging from experience, and from the results of vari- 

 ous chemical analyses, I believe that this amount is none 

 too large, and that the proportions for this locality are 

 very nearly as they should be. If the surface were to 

 be kept perfectly cultivated, a part of the fertilizer 

 might be dispensed with, though it is doubtful, inasmuch 

 as every year a larger amount of the three ingredients 

 mentioned above is used by the tree than is applied to 

 the land at the above rate. The soils of New England 

 can hardly be depended upon continuously to supply 



Fig. I. Piece-Rooted Trees. (See page 218. 



The land is in grass, which is mowed as often as it 

 will stand up against the scythe. The grass is never 

 carried off, but is used as a mulch about the trunks, and 

 is spread over as wide a circle as possible, in order to 

 keep out growth underneath the trees. No barn manure 

 is used, but a fertilizer is compounded each spring and 

 spread evenly over the entire surface, except where 

 mulched. It is intended to supply 25 pounds of phos- 

 phoric acid, 30 pounds of nitrogen and 75 pounds of 

 potash per acre. 



The formula used last spring is here given. For one 

 acre I use 200 lbs. cottonseed meal, 125 lbs. muriate of 

 potash, 75 lbs. plaster, 65 lbs. South Carolina floats, 



more than a small fraction of the nourishment that the 

 most profitable crops require. Although the growing 

 grass appropriates some of the constituents of the fertil- 

 izing material, it is not removed from the land, but re- 

 mains as a mulch, and through its decay is fully utilized. 

 In addition to this, when the leaves of the trees drop in 

 autumn, they are held by the stubble and go to enrich 

 the soil instead of being blown away, as is the case in 

 cultivated orchards. 



Under this treatment, my trees, notwithstanding their 

 age, still make wood quite freely and bear heavy crops 

 of fair sized apples, which, in the absence of fungous 

 diseases, prove to be unusually good keepers. Most of 



