Abstract
THE third annual report of the Nursery and Market Gardens Industries Development Society, Turner's Hill, Chesbunt, shows that continuous progress is being made in the application of science to horticultural practice. The fertiliser experiments are of considerable interest, and bring out the marked effectiveness of nitrogen compounds, especially of stable manure, in the growth of cucumbers, and their relative ineffectiveness in the growth of tomatoes. It is not definitely settled whether this result arises from some fundamental difference in the method of nutrition of the two plants, or simply from the relative drafts they make on the soil. The ineffectiveness of phosphates, both on cucumbers and tomatoes, is remarkable, and merits closer attention. An important technical matter is the demonstration that a relatively inexpensive mixture of artificial fertilisers gave larger returns than a mixture made by some of the best growers based on the best practice of the district. Fertiliser trials need considerable time for their execution, and it must be some time still before the experiments have yielded all the information they are capable of giving. They seem to support the old idea of an antagonism between fruiting and vegetative growth, for the methods which would normally produce the largest plants do not necessarily produce the largest amount of fruit.
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Science in Horticulture . Nature 101, 455 (1918). https://doi.org/10.1038/101455b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/101455b0