Effects of N, P, K and Ca application of the growth of young trees of several fruit species grown on a granite soil

Abstract

Recently large acerage of orchards has been established on virgin soils derived from granite in“Setouchi”district. In this experiment, the effects of application of N, P, K and Ca fertilizers on the growth of young fruit trees were observed with peach, Japanese persimmon, citrus, grape, loquat and chestnut, planted in the pots filled with granite soil.
The granite soil used contained 10% of clay, 0.079% of humus, 0.013% of total nitrogen, 0.0038% of available phosphoric acid, 0.056% of available potassium, 0.316mg/100g of exchangeable calcium and 3.33mg/100g of exchangeable magnesium. Its absorption coefficients of nitrogen and phosphoric acid were 98 and 212, respectively.
In the plot where phosphorus was not given, tree growth was most inferior in every fruit tree except for chestnut. When nitrogen was not supplied, the growth was also very poor in all species. Chestnut tree made better growth in the P-lacking plot than in the N-lacking plot. No effects were observed of the application of potassium. Calcium application improved the growth of citrus exclusively. All of the fruit trees made best growth when the above mentioned four elements were supplemented with farm manure.