PROFESSOR SMITH: While we are waiting for Mr. Reed I want to take up Mr. McCoy's soup suggestion. Water doesn't make good soup without something in it. Experiments show that you can mulch ground in some places and not wake up the tree, but fertilizer will wake it up the first year. MR. POTTER: What kind of fertilizer did you use? PROFESSOR SMITH: One must experiment to see what his land is short on. Sometimes you can fertilize your trees without any result. Sometimes potash will not do any good and sometimes it will. You will have to see what your ground needs. For young apple trees I found in my particular situation that nitrate of soda is all I want. I have what is called a Porter's clay soil on the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. I use that and then my trees get busy and grow. They make rapid growth even the first season with a handful of nitrate and for my three year old trees half a pound is enough. That is what my soil seems to need and we must use what the soil is short on. That is my interpretation of my situation and it works. THE PRESIDENT: Who can tell us whether nitrate of soda is good for nut trees? Can you, Mr. Simpson? MR. SIMPSON: In the South, we do not think so. THE PRESIDENT: The reason I asked, is that I have been studying that. I wrote Mr. Potter a letter suggesting that he use some on his young nut trees to see what it would do, and later I found out that all through the South it was not regarded as desirable. It seems they claim it starts pecan trees into an active growth but when they stop they make a very sudden stop and don't start growing any more. I want to get this in the record right here. You understand that is the general belief throughout the South, do you not? MR. SIMPSON: Yes sir, it is not considered good. THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Smith has made a very careful study of fruit trees and knows its effect on them from experiments, but it is well perhaps to consider fruit and nut trees separately. PROFESSOR SMITH: I should suggest to anybody who is thinking of working with trees, to get some seedling pecans and plant them and then fertilize some of them and others not, in the same kind of soil. In that way he can get his own fertilizer conclusions at a small expense and then he will know what his own soil needs. MR. MCCOY: We fertilized seedling pecans in a clay soil and we decided the trees we did not fertilize got along better than the ones we did. Of course that ground is better where the trees are than on the average farm. We used nitrate of soda and potash but we decided the ones we didn't fertilize did the best.