FERTILISING OF ORCHARDS.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 3217, 15 June 1909, Page 3

FERTILISING OF ORCHARDS.

The cultivation of apples is one of the chief ftalurea of agriculture in Nova Scotia, and in consequence of its importance more care and attention are directed to the orchards I than in this country. With the object of affording information to the farmers, the Nova Scotia Government have established experimental orchards, where the different problems connected with the cultivation of fruit, and especially apples are studied. The subject of the application of fertilisers is being thoroughly investigated. Rotation in the fertilisers applied to orchards is recommended as advantageous. For example, farmyard manure one year, cinmical fertilisers another. Farmyard manure greatly benefits old, neglected orchards requiring nitiogen but its use should be discontinued where trees run too much to wood and leaf without fruit, and some fertilisers containing phosphate and potash should be applied. Green manuring is much employed to supply vegetable matter, wood ashes applied at the rate of 2 to 40 bushels are found to give capital results, especially the ashes from hard wood, wh ch contain about five to seven per cent, of potash and some phosphoric acid. But the supply of wood ashes is limited, and commercial fertilisers are largely used. The two most generally employed are finely ground bone-meal at the rate of five to eight cwt per acre to supply phosphate and nitrogen, and muriate of potash at the rate of one to three cwt per acre to supply potash. Nitrate of soda is not much used except to give young trees increased vigour, Mr E. 13. Voorhes, of New Jersey Experimental Station, said: "To provide vegetable matter and to improve the physical quality of poor soils, apply yard manure once in four years, in fall or winter, at the rategof from five to ten tons per acre. To aid in the decomposition ot vegetable matter, and 10 insure a sufficiency of lime as plant food, apply lime at the rate of 25 busels per acre once in five years. To provide, in addition, an abundance of all forms of available plant food at the times needed for the development of the tree and fruit, apply annually chemical fertilisers in the following proportions per acre:— Nitrate of soda 1001b. Superphosphate 1001b. Ground bone 2001b. Muriate of Potash 2001b. "The amounts to be applied depend upon the character of the soils, the kind of fruit, and the age and vigor of the tree; those given perhaps mark the minimum. In a number of orchards the quantities are very much larger than is here indicated, and the larg'er application is believed by the growers to be proportionally profitable." Frank T. Shutt. chief chemist of the Dominion Experimental Farms, wrote: — Assuming the leaves of a fullgr<iwn apple tree to weigh 501b, and reckoning forty trees per acre, the manural value contained in the 2,0001b of leaves is equal to: — Nitrogan 17.741b. Phosphoric acid 3.881b. Potash 7.841b. The leaves are returned to tha soil, but the fruit is exported. Thus in the case of in orchard twenty-five years old, producing 160 barrels per acre- equal to, say 20,8001b of apples there is a los 3tc the soil of approximately : Nitrogen 8.91b. Phosphoric acid 5.01b. Potash 32.81b. The following is given as another useful formu'a for manuring orchards: — Good rotted barnyard | manure 10 to 15 tons ! per acre. Kainit 300-7001b. Or muriate of potash 100-2001b. Bone-meal (fine ground) 100-2001b. Or superphosphate (35 per cent, soluble) 125-2501b. 1 1