The ranch. [volume] (Seattle, Wash.) 1902-1914, 1909-09-15

but enough has been given to show
that green leaves are the workshop,
so to speak, where food material is
worked over into such forms as will
nourish the plant and furnish our
fruits. Good, healthy leaves are the
one thing indispensable in plant
growth. Pick the leaves off a tree
and keep them off and you will kill it
as surely as you will kill a chicken by
cutting off it's head
In answer to the numerous inquiries
referred to above, | would say that if
your lawn, potatoes or trees are not
doing well, determine, in the first
place, if the supply of water is suff-
cient to carry the mineral salts from
the roots to the leaves, and in the
second place, if you have sufficient
sunlight and heat to carry on the
elaboration of the crude materials
into the suitable forms for the nour-
ishment of the plants. If you cannot
find relief in that way, it will probably
be necessary to have your soil chem
ically examined by a soil expert to
find out if any one of the ten elements
named above is lacking or deficient.
Remember, that plant can not grow
at all if any one of these elements
is lacking. Very fortunately, seven
of these ten elements are nearly al
ways present sufficiently to enable the
plant to perform it's functions prop
erly. The three that may cause
trouble by being deficient are nitrogen,
phosphorus and potash. 1t will scarce
ly be possible to find any soil abso-
lutely destitute of either of these
three, but it is no uncommon thing to
find one of them deficient, so that
while the plants do not die they be-
come feeble.
1t often happens that the element
that is deficient is so because it is
not in the available form, and as a
result the plant cannot use it. For
instance, nearly four-ffths of the at
mosphere is nitrogen, but plants can
not use a particle of it unless it is
converted into ammonia or into nj
trates. This is too large a subject to
enter upon now, but fruit-growers, as
we'll as all kinds of farmers, can we'll
afford to study such matters. Sor-
auer gives a fine illustration of how
plants are benefited by supplying
potash when it is lacking. He says:
Potassium (potash) which is chiefly
found in very young tissues, and dis
appears in the older ones, is probably
connected with the formation of carbo-
hydrates, i. e., with those organic sub
stances which consist of carbon, n.y.
drogen and oxygen, and in which the
last two elements occur in the same
proportions as they do in water.
Starch, sugar and cellulose are such
carbohydrates which are transmutable
within the plant. If a plant does not
find any potassium in the soil, its
growth ceases, and the leaves do not
develop the power of forming starch
within the green cOloring bodies, the
chorophyl grains. A plant which has
shown no growth for months, owing
to the absence of potassium, will re-
cover in few days after that element
has been supplied to it; even after
few hours starch will begin to make
it's appearance in the chlorophyl
grains"
Knowing how things grow will not
make them grow, but our knowledge
of such things will enable us to assist
nature and in this way bring about
beneficial results. knowledge is
power" in such cases.
Prof. j. L. Dumas, President Of the
Washington State Horticultural Asso-
citation, was in attendance at the
Alaska Yukon-Pacific Exposition quite
recently. The editor of this depart
ment had a conference with him on
matters pertaining to fruit growing in
Washington and the Pacific North
west. President Dumas and Secretary
L. G.. Monroe have made an effort to
get the managers of the National APP
pie Show to be held in Spokane in
November next, to adopt the Standard
apple box in the Northwest as the box