FLORIDA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY 
111 
there are still others which can thrive on 
such soils without difficulty. I refer par¬ 
ticularly to one of the flowering peren¬ 
nials, Silene orientalis, which throve to 
perfection where most of the plants enu¬ 
merated above died before they had made 
materially more growth than was possi¬ 
ble from the stored-up food material in 
the seed. The blackberry, for example, 
grew well on such soil. The Lima bean 
was also able to make a fair growth, 
whereas the Golden Wax and other vari¬ 
eties of string beans were partial failures. 
Watermelons grew splendidly, whereas 
the cantaloupe practically failed. Other 
plants were found to range between these 
extremes. 
Potash .—For most crops it is more or 
less immaterial what the source of the 
potash is, as long as it is soluble in water, 
or is available to the roots of plants. 
However, citrus fruits, tobacco, sugar 
beets, and hops are illustrative of noted 
exceptions. The usual potash sources 
are muriate, which contains about twice 
as much chlorine as potash; high-grade 
sulphate of potash, which contains little 
or no chlorine; kainit, which contains two 
or three times as much chlorine as pot¬ 
ash ; and the double manure salt, contain¬ 
ing both sulphate of potash and sulphate 
of magnesia, and but relatively small 
quantities of chlorine. It is the aim of 
progressive fertilizer manufacturers to 
supply those forms of potash for special 
crops which are adapted to the kind of 
plant to be fertilized. 
LIME 
There are soils in Florida which con¬ 
tain a great abundance of carbonate of 
lime, in fact, far more than is desirable. 
On the other hand, there are some soils 
which are so acid and deficient in lime 
that its application is one of the first es¬ 
sentials to success. For citrus trees, as 
stated before, lime should be used with 
extreme caution, if at all, for we are well 
aware of its various ill effects on citrus 
trees of all kinds. But if any lime is used 
for citrus trees, one should probably em¬ 
ploy only a small part of what is indi¬ 
cated as necessary to completely neutral¬ 
ize the soil; whereas, if one were growing 
cantaloupes, lettuce, spinach, beets, and 
many other truck and field crops which 
are greatly benefited by lime, liming ap¬ 
proximately to the full limit of the quan¬ 
titatively determined requirement may 
prove helpful. 
I have been much interested in what 
one of the speakers has said regarding 
die-back; for in connection with an ex¬ 
periment which I have been conducting 
with oranges here in Florida, die-back 
was markedly increased where magnesian 
lime was used three years before at the 
rate of only one ton per acre. The dis¬ 
ease was even worse when practically 
pure lime was substituted for magnesian 
lime. The die-back was also accompa¬ 
nied by wither-tip and frenching. The 
trees in the same experiment which re¬ 
ceived no lime were far less affected with 
die-back. Die-back was also present in 
