Consult the Trees.

Can I send you a little soil out of my one-year-old pear orchard so that you can advise me what I can do to improve its fertility.  The trees are fairly thrifty, but as fruit growing is my pleasure I wish to make it a model orchard and add whatever it requires of nitrogen, humus, etc., immediately so as to increase the growth for this summer.  Next winter I intend to put manure around them and cultivate about every other month.

Careful experimenting with fertilizers will teach you more than analysis would do, because the behavior of the tree under various conditions tells you more than a chemist possibly could.  Besides, we are of the conviction that on good soils young fruit trees should not be pushed beyond the growth which they would naturally make with a regular and adequate moisture supply.  Be careful about using fertilizers on young trees, either in the summer or in the winter.  When they come to bearing age and yield large crops of fruit, that is another question.  Any California soil which will not grow young fruit trees thriftily should not be used for orchard purposes unless an amateur desires to grow trees on a picturesque lot of rocks or sand.

Results of Fertilizing Olives.

We have 100 acres in olives about six miles northeast of Rialto in San Bernardino county.  In 1908 we got about five tons from the 100 acres.  We began fertilizing and cultivating in 1909, and have put on the 100 acres about the same amount of fertilizer each year.  In 1909 we got 15 tons; in 1910, 116 tons, and 1911 is estimated at 325 to 350 tons.

It is important that your olive trees are responding to good treatment and fertilization.  Unfortunately, that does not seem to be always the case and a good many olive trees have been made into firewood because nothing seemed to bring them into satisfactory bearing.  Good bearing olive trees are now among the very best of our horticultural properties, while non-bearing olive trees are worth about $7 a cord for fire wood.

Nursery Fertilizers.

I have light sandy loam, well drained.  It has been in blackberries, and I now have it planted to nursery fruit tree stock.  I have given it this spring two applications of nitrate of soda, but no other fertilizer.  Will the nitrate act alone, or must I apply also the phosphate and potash to get results?

Nitrate of soda will act alone and will stimulate growth, and there are cases in which there is enough phosphate and potash already in the soil to act with it.  Usually, however, it is customary to use a complete fertilizer containing phosphate and potash as well as nitrogen, in order that the plant may be more roundly supplied and promoted, and one would be a little safer in using that sort of fertilizer than in relying upon the nitrate of soda alone.  You will, of course, be careful not to use these fertilizers in too large amounts, for nitrate of soda is especially dangerous if used in excess.