The Brandon news. (Brandon, Miss.) 1892-1961, 1905-01-19
Thirty Years. Experience In Berry Fruit
Gro wing.

Thirty Years. Experience In Berry Fruit
Gro wing.
Thirty years old in any one line
of business Is quite patriarchial,
for this has been generation of
changes and frequent adjustments and
| readjustments. It has not fallen to
the lot of many men to hold to one
thing for so near the third part Of the
century. I consider myself fortunate
that fate has permitted me to bend
/ virtually all the energies of my life
| to one thing, given me time and OPP
portunity to master it in proportion to
my abilities and to reap a reward that
seems to me greater than my deserts.
And still more fortunate am / in that
| l have had sons to grow up around me,
profiting by my experience, to see more
broadly and reach higher, making my
plans and aims their plans and aims.
| but larger. But | am not writing a
family history, but treatise on fruit
| growing.
In that thirty years I learned many
things and had to unlearn many things.
| What had to chiefly unlearn was
that the old system of manuring fruits
was wrong. TO me and to my average
contemporaries in those days manure
was manure and fertilizer fertilizer.
1t occurred to US dimly, if at all, that
as different animals required different
kinds Of food and in different proper
lions, so did different plants and crops.
| And l will add that the loss from lily
balanced manure and fertilizer in those
dark days was enormous, and who will
be bold enough to say that the dark
days are even yet entirely past with
all of us?
| The three fertilizing properties which
experience has proven sho;ld be added
to the soil to make it productive are,
as is we'll known, nitrogen, potash and
phosphoric acid. All of these are es-
sential, one as much as the other but
they are needed in different proper
| lions on different soils and for different
crops, and their blind and injudicious
use works loss in many ways.
| AS nitrogen is the most expensive
it is in that the greatest waste
and loss occurs in the ignorant
use Of fertilizers. The loss is greater
in berry fruit growing than in any
other crop we have, because more fer
| tilizer is used on this than is the Gus
| tom on other crops and because the
loss in quantity and quality through
unWise manuring is 50 great in this
crop.
| My largest crops Of fruit have al
ways come from the most liberal use
of fertilizer when rightly proportioned
| My largest crops Of disappointments
have grown where the largest guam
tity of lily balanced fertilizer was used.
Ny experience is that a perfectly
| balanced berry fruit fertilizer should
| contain at least two and one-half times
| as much potash and twice as much
! phOsphOric acid as it contains am
/ Eonia.
My plan in planting Strawberries,
,dewberries, blackberries, raspberries,
ETC., is to apply cottonseed meal in the
| drills before the plants are set at the
rate of 600 to 800 pounds to the acre.
This is sown in the drills and mixed
with the soil and listed on just before
I, the plants are set in winter or spring.
After that no more nitrogen is used in
any form until after the crop is gath
cred The following year.
I depend upon plenty OF potash and
! phosphoric acid to make the fruit Nor
have I ever failed in my whole ex-
| perience to make a good crop except
one year when hail destroyed about
| one-half. / apply potash in the form
of sulphate of potash, which is decid-
| eddy the best form for all kinds of
fruit, using about 100 pounds per acre,
| usually mixed with 500 pounds of
acid phosphate or dissolved bone. This
mixture l sow broadcast over the
plants during late fall and winter. 1t
| will undoubtedly pay to use a some
what large quantity of both Of these
| fertilizers either broadcast before the
| plants are set or else by chopping in
around and between the plants during
| the summer or. early fall. Potash and
| phosphoric acid, as they are much less
| liable to be washed out and lost than
| ammonia is, can therefore be more lib
| orally used without loss, as most of
! the fertility Of this kind remains in the
| soil until taken up by the plants.
I will add that the largest yield of
! strawberries which / ever heard of
| being made in this State was grown
by myself under the system of fertil-
| izing above described.
0. w. BLACKNALL.
Kittrell, n C.
Subsoiling.