New York AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMMENT STATION. a8 
containing nitrogen at a later time. The fertilizers should be 
weighed as accurately as possible. Spread broadcast about the 
tree over an area slightly greater than that covered by the 
branches of the tree. In cultivated orchards the commercial 
fertilizer should be harrowed in and the manure plowed under. 
If the results are to be at all conclusive, such an experiment 
should run several years. It is not impossible in the average 
orchard to accurately weigh or measure the crop at harvest time 
to determine the relative value of the different treatments. It 
is not sufficient in packing to keep count of the number of barrels 
of marketable fruit from each plat; culls and windfalls should be 
accounted for. 
It will be urged that this plat experimentation will be entirely 
out of the question for the busy fruit grower. The objection is 
not well founded. The plats can be laid out, the materials 
weighed, and all plans made for such experimentation in the 
winter, so that the actual work in the spring need not be great. 
Such a simple experiment as has been outlined here may give 
results of financial value; at the same time it is true investigation 
and should stimulate the spirit of investigation to the great good 
of the fruit grower himself. If such investigations were de- 
veloped among fruit growers as a body, in all phases of their 
work, the industry would soon be revolutionized. 
CONCLUSION. 
The most important lessons taught by the experiment here 
recorded are: That an orchard soil may not need potash, phos- 
phoric acid, nor lime, even though the soil may have been 
cropped a half century; that in a soil which produces apples of 
poor color potash and phosphoric acid may not improve the 
color; and that the apple does not seem to be as exhaustive of 
soil fertility as farm crops. The experiment suggests, as well, 
that to assume without definite knowledge that a tree needs this 
or that plant food often leads to the waste of fertilizing mate- 
rial; and that in the matter of fertilizing an orchard a fruit 
grower should experiment for himself, since an orchard’s need 
of fertilizer can be determined only by the behavior of the trees 
when supplied with the several plant foods. 
