OCR Text |
Show FRUIT AND FERTILITY. r.i . ' "Next to tomatoes it has been found that strawberries make the least dc- .mand on the soil. An acre of ground producing 6ooo pounds of berries will be called on to give up only eight and one-half pounds of nitrogen, thrc.. pounds of phosphoric acid, and ten T pounds of potash. In other word 3 $t the land will have to put only about one-tenth as much plant food into a crop of berries that it would into a crop of corn. The berries will gen-, gen-, ' crally sell for about ten times as much as the corn, so that for the same number of dollars of return the s5il will have only to part with about one-hundredth as much plant food. There is nothing removed from ths plant except the fruit, and this, like tomatoes, is largely water. While it i necessary to pay some attention to ' the fertility of the soil and to oc-cinsionally oc-cinsionally apply some kind of fertilizer, ferti-lizer, it is not necessary to make a heavy application at any time. Us- ' ually the best time to make such nn 'application is in the summer or fall, after the fruit 1ms been removed. perhaps the best material for this purpose is well rotted barnyard manure. man-ure. It is necessary to have the manure man-ure well rotted so that the plant food it contains will not be scattered through too great a bulk and all the weed seeds that it contains will be dead. Many times the application of tjhc rich soil, found where an old tnatw suck had been rotted down or where there had been a cow lot, U preferable to manure. Make the application ap-plication to the soil between the rows and mix it in the dirt with a hoe. |