The Elk County Advocate

SMALL FRUITS IN SANDY SOIL.—We have the following note from Mr. A. B. Allen of this city: "You say in The Tribune that it will prove useless to 'plant rhubarb in thin, poor soil.' I have heard others assert that 'it cannot be grown on sandyland."

"I inclose you a sample of my garden soil at Tom's River, N. J., which you will observe is almost a pure white sea sand. About two feet below the surface a yellow sand, not quite so shifting, but, like this, without a trace of alumina, and scarcely a trace of vegetable matter in its composition. I set out rhubarb here two years ago this April past, and put about half a bushel of unfermented stable manure around each plant. Got a small crop that season, and a fair one last year, and this spring as large a crop as I ever saw produced. Every autumn since planting I have put four forkfuls of coarse, unfermented, stable manure round each plant, and in the spring mulched lightly with salt-marsh hay. This is all I ever did to it, except marling and liming the surface of the garden lightly in April, 1870. I have other land, a thin, poor, gravelly soil, where I planted rhubarb last spring, and treated it as I have in the garden, except mulching. The growth this spring is equal to that of the garden. It is the Myatt Linnaeus variety.

I have heard it asserted that currants would not grow in a poor sandy soil. I can show you a fair crop on my bushes now of green fruit, from very small roots set out two years ago. The summer of 1870, you will recollect, was excessively dry, and I got no growth that year; and about one-fourth of them died from the effects of the drouth. They were lightly manured, like the rhubarb, and mulched. Gooseberries have done equally well, and are loaded now with green fruit. On my thin gravel, and especially alongside of an open slat or rail fence, north, east or west sides, currants and gooseberries grow about as well as in any other soil, if properly manured; and all small berry fruit in such soils, from strawberries on to blackberries, are of a superior, sweet, tender flavor.'