FLORIDA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
129 
except that the chickens roost in the trees. The oranges I 
have here were not selected; simply taken as they came. 
My object was to see if I could preserve oranges, and I 
jput some away, and when the time came I opened them, 
and they looked pretty well, and I want to show you that 
•oranges can be grown with stable manure at Waldo. I 
have tried phosphate on my trees, and I have tried 
potash on some trees as an experiment. I could 
not tell where I had put it. The fertilizer I did buy was 
bought because I cannot buy all the stable manure I want, 
nor make it all. I have used blood and bone, and still use it 
-to a small extent. I have made a good living raising fruit in 
Florida. I commenced without a dollar, except a piece of 
poor land. I have supported my family, and I have as nice a 
place as anybody about Waldo. I sold my oranges last year 
at an average of $1.10. Now, that is my experience and the 
result of stable manure. I wish to bring the oranges up and 
present them to the society. Those oranges were picked the 
first day of January last, and preserved by a process of my 
own, which I am not free to give away iust now. 
Mr. Peck —A great variety of opinion has been advanced 
this afternoon. We have not stable manure around our place 
so I thought I would give you a formula I have used and with 
very good results on poor pine lands. I purchase the material 
myself—sulphate of ammonia, sulphate of potash and acid 
phosphate. Possibly better results might be obtained from 
bone black, but I think if anybody who has a poor piece of 
land and wants a fertilizer that will do good service, will take 
that kind of material and get somebody to mix it for him, or 
do it himself, and will use about 5 per cent, of ammonia, 7 to 
8 per cent, phosphoric acid, and 8 to 10 percent, actual potash 
v(K 2 O), he will have a fine fertilizer, 
Mr. Bacon —This has been the longest half-day I ever expe¬ 
rienced, but I have learned some things. You have allowed 
the other gentlemen to say a few words, so I hope you will al¬ 
low me to do the same. 1 am a humus man, a stable manure 
man and a cow manure man, but at the rate oranges have been 
selling I cannot buy chemical fertilizers. Some seven or 
eight years ago I went into the humus business. I pur¬ 
chased quite a quantity of pig mannre from neighbors that 
did not want it, and dug trenches round my trees and 
poured it in, and at the same time I covered my grove with 
decayed vegetable matter. I never had such a crop of or¬ 
anges. They produced the most astonishing crop of fruit, 
and every year since then I have been so poor that I have not 
been able to haul the mulching. Every year that I have not had 
