(I posted this earlier today under the title "I'm puzzled by this road sign.")
A photo I encountered while digitizing the family memorabilia. Two unknown-to-me-but-probably-distantly-related young women posing by a roadside sign. Approximate date based on other photos would be early 1900s.
Don't fail to Plant Your Fruit Trees With
Du Pont Exp__sives
Best (b)y Test
Assuming two letters are obscured by the young lady's hat, the only words I know that would fit are explosives, expensives, and expansives.
As much as I would love to learn that my ancestors planted fruit trees using explosives, I would have to think they were advertising "expansives," but a quick Google search doesn't reveal any such use of the term.
This is totally unimportant, but sometimes readers here have ideas or resources or interpretations that escape me.
Updated: The puzzle was solved by readers Kara and Bob and Rob from Amersfoort and David and The First and some unknowns:
"Subsoil broken up by blast making easy path for roots." Progressive farmers are "using dynamite for removing stumps and boulders, planting and cultivating fruit trees, regenerating barren soil, ditching, draining, excavating and road-making. Write now for Free Booklet - "Tree Planting With Dynamite, No. 290.""It makes sense (and I wouldn't have minded having a little dynamite when I first hand-tilled our tomato patch out back). In retrospect the reason I ignored this possibility was that I thought there was no evidence on the sign for the top of a letter "L" behind her hat. Now I realize her hat had a white peak.
Dynamite for gardening. You learn something every day.
Addendum: And here's that Du Pont booklet, located by reader Paul and others.
Dupont explosives were promoted for a wide variety of uses including clearing land and planting trees.
ReplyDeletehttps://books.google.com/books/about/Dupont_Handbook_of_Explosives.html?id=hAUQHQAACAAJ
. Better fruit. Fruit-culture. Page 8 BETTER FRUIT August, ipip The Use of Powder in Blasting Orchard Tree Holes BLASTING out tree holes in wliicli to set an orchard is becoming more prevalent. Experiments in planting fruit ti'ees in ground that had been blasted or spade-dug have shown remarkable results in t'avor of the for- mer way of setting fruit trees, par- ticularly in ground where the soil was very hard. The use of blasting powder in planting an orchard is not new. In 1910 the DuPont Powder Company be- gan to promote the use of explosives in plantir.g new orchards and in re- juvenating
ReplyDeleteIt would appear to be explosives. Here is duPont's brochure from 1910, "Farming with Dynamite", which discusses orchards.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.gutenberg.org/files/39869/39869-h/39869-h.htm
There was a time that a crate or two of dynamite was useful to the farmer.
ReplyDeletehttps://io9.gizmodo.com/this-1910-brochure-explained-how-to-farm-with-dynamite-5915253
This is what I found: "Make Your Old Trees Bear. Why let the old trees go to rack and ruin. Make them produce. Make them pay renewed interest on your past investment. Regenerate those old orchards and make the old trees bear. Du Pont Red Cross Dynamite will help you. By blasting and breaking up the subsoil around the trees, a new water reservoir is created, new plant food is made available and the old trees will be made to produce as well as before."
ReplyDeletesource + picture
Perhaps it was indeed explosives. Tree planting with du Pont dynamite
ReplyDeleteHaving done some tree planting, "expletives" would work, even if it doesn't fit the sign.
ReplyDeleteWell played.
DeleteBoth to excavate the planting hole and to loosen up the soil. Found this in "The Journal of Agriculture," Vol 2 No 5, 1961, from Australia but I'm sure the uses were similar elsewhere:
ReplyDelete"TREE PLANTING: Explosives not only dig the hole but also loosen up the surrounding soil. Blasting should be done only when the soil is dry and satisfactory results can be obtained by a charge of 4 to 8 oz. at a depth of 3 feet."
Link: https://tinyurl.com/vkq73f8
I've never heard of DuPont "Expansives" but DuPont Explosives were definitely a thing, and you can find several images of the company logo to match with a quick Google search.
ReplyDeleteMy guess is that "Dupont Explosives" here refers to the refers to the company rather than the product, and the ad is exhorting us to use the fertilizer products of said company on our fruit trees. Fertilizer being a common byproduct of chemical / explosives manufacture.
ReplyDeleteKaboom is correct it looks like?
ReplyDeletehttps://archive.org/stream/cu31924003316886/cu31924003316886_djvu.txt
https://www.amazon.com/Tree-Planting-Pont-Dynamite-Information/dp/0265904587
https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/716Gl11RPkL._AC_SL1500_.jpg
And if I may add, your website is simply amazing, I've been an avid consumer for many years and you and your labour of love are simply amazing, thank you for sharing your gift with all of us!
ReplyDeleteI googled around a bit and ended up at a link to this Du Pont Farmers' Handbook: Instructions in the Use of High Explosives for Clearing Land, Planting and Cultivating Trees, Drainage, Ditching and Subsoiling:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.amazon.com/Pont-Farmers-Handbook-Instructions-Cultivating/dp/0282683305
(Still not clear on your question of *how* explosives help plant trees!)
It actually is "explosives"! Look up "Red Cross Farm Powder." Digging a hole is time-consuming, hard work. If you blast a hole, it takes very little work on your part, and the hole is now full of friable, porous soil that roots can easily grow into. Also - and this is a guess - I think such explosives were made with nitrogen compounds, so the remains of the explosives would act as fertilizer.
ReplyDeletehttps://archive.org/details/cu31924003316886/page/n4/mode/2up
ReplyDeletemaybe 20 years ago, when the town was putting in sewer lines, they used dynamite to loosen the soil so the trenches could be easily dug. they would drill during the day and blast at the end of the day; if i had to go in to town, i would try to time it for late afternoon to see the blasting.
ReplyDeletethere wasn't a huge explosion, more like a ripple and the ground would be lifted a foot along the blast line.
I-)
Near where I live in Oregon, timber companies 100-150 years ago would sell off 10-acre plots after they had been logged - often to the loggers. These "stump farms" had massive stumps that the new owners would spend years clearing in their free time (often with dynamite) so that they could be planted to orchard. Once the stumps were out and the baby trees were in, they'd grow strawberries in the rows to generate revenue until the trees were mature enough to set a crop and shade out the strawberries.
ReplyDelete