Rensselaer Union, Volume 11, Number 42, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 July 1879 — Fertilize the Fruit Trees. [ARTICLE]

Fertilize the Fruit Trees.

Among wide-awake fruit-culturists, there is a difference of opinion as to the best mode of keeping up the fertility of an orchard, ana to this class I address myself, premising that my conclusions, though drawn from a long personal experience, and not a limited observation of the practices of others, are not presumed to be infallible, The trees for the first orchard 1 set out were obtained from the late Judge Buel, then editing the Albany Cultivator , and he told me to keep the orchard under the plow, raising roots, but no grass or grain. 1 esteemed him as an oracle in all matters pertaining to horticulture, and followed his precepts. For a number of years I gave a garden cultivation to my orchard, plowing deeply and fertilizing with strong, nitrogenous manure from the stables. The trees grew luxuriantly, and soon began to yield splendid fruit, and an abuudance of it; but here and there a limb would blight, ugly cracks would occur between the limbs and trunks, the plow bruised the roots badly, and occasionally a tree died. 1 concluded that either the fertilizer was too rank with ammonia, or that the plow was too rough a 'surgical instrument for root pruning, and decided to stock the land with grass and trust to top-dressing with compost to keep up the fertility. This cheeked the growth Of wood, and diminished for a time the size and quantity of fruit, but it restored health to the trees. Still this orchard does not look as well to-day as one afterward started and stocked down to grass the same year in which the trees were planted. Both orchards are pn similar soil, and have been treated alike, except that the one first started was kept under the plow for the ten or twelve years. Both have been top-dressed liberally, and, with few exceptions, annually, with a compost of muck, with a motley mixture of barn-yard manure, wood ashes, refuse salt, lime, old plaster (mortar), bones digested in wood the sweepings of a woolen factory, and refuse sizing from a paper mill, never rejecting a dead horse that was occasionally Offered. When this compost was rank, smelling to heaven, l checked the smell, and at the same time improved the compost, by a free sprinkling of gypsum. ‘With the application of this fertilizer, composed, -as will readily be seen, quite largely of saline materials, 1 have been able to cut two' crops of grass pnnueUy, and at the same thne keep the trees ih good K ing and bearing condition. The oithe trees is smooth, the leaves are of a dark green, the fruit fair, and the trees every way healthy. 1 attribute tho results largely to the abundance of inorganic material- in-the compost, with enough organic matter to keep the surface of the soil light and porous. -

If muck cannot be bad conveniently,, then 1 should substitute leaf mold from the forest Indeed, lam inclined to beliove from my limited experience with leaf mold, that it is better than muck for the basis of the compost, as leaves, beside making the soil light furnish the salta’of lime and potash quite liberally. 1 cannot speak too highly of wood ashes as a fertilizer for fruit trees. With the physical condition of the soil all right I am inclined to think wood ashes alone will keep an orchard in good heart as they contain all the elements required for growing wood and fruit except carbon qnd nitrogen, and these are furnished very freely by the air. A compost made of muck or leaf mold and wood ashes will keep the physical condition of the soil right*and also supply the chemical constituents for fruit. A| liberal top-dressing with such a compost annually or biennially will gradually restore a soil to the virgin condition in which it was when first reclaimed from the forest, and every one knows that fruit trees luxuriate in a virgin soil. A good wash, and at the same time a good fertilizer for fruit trees, is made by mixing soft soap and water in eaual proportions for old, and two-thirds water for young trees, and rubbing it in thoroughly and liberally with an old broom. This kills insects, especially the bark louse, gives the bark a smooth, healthy look, and furnishes potash in every availiable form for the growth of wood and fruit. The common practice of whitewashing fruit trees is objectionable, as the Time stops the pores of tbe bark, and impedes the breathing and exudations of the tree, the bark of a tree operating very similarly to the skin of an animal. Whenever the pores of the skin are stopped we expect disease. Soap and water keep the pores of,the skin open and clean, and operate on trees very similarly. A tree well soaped looks as much bettor for the operation as a dirty boy does -when, well iwashed. It may be acjdod that soft soap is an antidote to the borer. It will not kill him when fairly entrenched in the tree, but ii does hinder the deposition of eggs, and destroys them when deposited.—Alexander Hyde, in Country Gentleman. mm m am The funniest fool in a circus, says the Meriden Recorder, is the mule—and he says nothing.