H. E. Hooker places the cost of manure equally high, but seems willing to use all he can get, and does not think we can profitably employ artificial manures as a substitute.
In this I agree with him. But while I should not expect artificial manures, when used alone, to prove as cheap or as valuable as stable-manure at present prices, I think it may well be that a little nitrate of soda, sulphate of ammonia, and superphosphate of lime, or dissolved Peruvian guano, might be used as an auxiliary manure to great advantage.
Mr. H. E. Hooker, once sowed, at my suggestion, some sulphate of ammonia and superphosphate on part of a block of nursery trees, and he could not perceive that these manures did any good. Ellwanger & Barry also tried them, and reported the same negative result. This was several years ago, and I do not think any similar experiments have been made since.
“And yet,” said the Deacon, “you used these self same manures on farm-crops, and they greatly increased the growth.”
“There are several reasons,” said the Doctor, “why these manures may have failed to produce any marked effect on the nursery trees. In the first place, there was considerable prejudice against them, and the nurserymen would hardly feel like relying on these manures alone. They probably sowed them on land already well manured; and I think they sowed them too late in the season. I should like to see them fairly tried.”
So would I. It seems to me that nitrate of soda, and superphosphate, or dissolved Peruvian guano, could be used with very great advantage and profit by the nurserymen. Of course, it would hardly be safe to depend upon them alone. They should be used either in connection with stable-manure, or on land that had previously been frequently dressed with stable-manure.
MANURE FOR FRUIT-GROWERS.
How to keep up the fertility of our apple-orchards, is becoming an important question, and is attracting considerable attention.
There are two methods generally recommended—I dare not say generally practised. The one, is to keep the orchard in bare-fallow; the other, to keep it in grass, and top-dress with manure, and either eat the grass off on the land with sheep and pigs, or else mow it frequently, and let the grass rot on the surface, for mulch and manure.
“You are speaking now,” said the Deacon, “of bearing apple-orchards. No one recommends keeping a young orchard in grass. We all know that young apple trees do far better when the land is occupied with corn, potatoes, beans, or some other crop, which can be cultivated, than they do on land occupied with wheat, barley, oats, rye, buckwheat, or grass and clover. And even with bearing peach trees, I have seen a wonderful difference in an orchard, half of which was cultivated with corn, and the other half sown with wheat. The trees in the wheat were sickly-looking, and bore a small crop of inferior fruit, while the trees in the corn, grew vigorously and bore a fine crop of fruit. And the increased value of the crop of peaches on the cultivated land was far more than we can ever hope to get from a crop of wheat.”