212 State Horticitltttral Society. 



A question: What would be the objection to alfalfa being sowed 

 in between the rows instead of clover and cow peas? 



Secretary Goodman. — I prefer clover to the alfalfa. 



A question: Why? 



Secretary Goodman. — Because in two years time you have got 

 enough seed on the ground to reseed it. and if necessary you can 

 plow it up and sow it to rye, and next spring you will have enough 

 red clover come up to make a pretty good stand. If you choose to put 

 it in corn you can do so. That alfalfa down with us is very much 

 harder to get to stand. I have tried it for four years and only got one 

 stand out of four years,, and it cost us a great deal to do it. Of the 

 red clover we can get a stand. 



President Murra}'. — I would like to ask ^Ir. Goodman how many 

 trees he is cultivating? 



Secretary Goodman. — I am cultivating 2,100 acres. I have 167,000 

 trees and it takes lots of time to do it, and we study every way possi- 

 ble to get all the work we can, and every team and every man is 

 at work every day ; and some of it we didn't plow last summer except 

 the tree rows and there turned the weeds under, kept the tree rows 

 clean, and that ground we are plowing and will continue plowing every 

 da}- all winter long. 



J. J. Kiser, Stanberry. }iIo.— There has been so much said and 

 printed lately about thorough tillage in orchards that I feel compelled 

 to enter a protest. It may be all right in localities where there is not 

 danger of soil abrasion or wash, but with our sandy loam on hillside, 

 if the whole surface was cultivated or worked into garden bed condi- 

 tion a hard rain would wash the soil off and leave roots exposed. I 

 have seen soil washed off as deep and in places deeper than it had 

 been stirred an irreparable as well as an unnecessary loss. 



I would suggest two methods suitable for our soil : First, planting 

 the orchard in rows as nearly as possible horizontally along hillsides, 

 paying no attention to the points of the compass or straight rows, cul- 

 tivating the tree rows for a term of years and leaving the middle of the 

 spaces to clover, then putting the tree rows to clover and cultivating 

 the space between ; or second, to sow the whole surface to clover and 

 cultivating with a Morgan spading harrow that will loosen the soil but 

 not tear up the clover plant. 



Mr. Baxter of Illinois. — We, up in Illinois, begin to fight the drouth 

 by the same means that we fight too much moisture. We are tiling. 

 I have a .vineyard that has been tiled for several years, and I have 

 the finest vineyard in my county. I raised a fine crop this year and 

 1 got $500 oft of my vineyard. Now this vineyard was thoroughly 



