602 Agricultural Experiment Station, Ithaca, N. Y. 



All these beneiits must be as useful to the apple tree as they are 

 to strawberries or ciirrauts. Yet, tillage may be a positive damage 

 to the orchard, if injudiciously done. Just what is judicious tillage 

 must be determined for every farm and every season ; in fact, just 

 here is the point where the greatest skill is required in farming. A 

 man must know the underlying principles of the operation before 

 he can practice it successfully. Yet two or three points of advice 

 may be noted in passing : 



a. Tillage should he hegun early in the season, in orchards. — 

 Trees complete most of their growth by the first of July. Early 

 tillage saves the moisture which has accumulated during the winter 

 and the spring ; it is capable of putting the soil in fine mechanical 

 condition, and this condition is more important than fertility ; it 

 warms up the soil and sets the plants quickly to work ; it turns 

 under the' herbage when that herbage is soft and moist and when 

 there is moisture in the soil, so that the herbage soon breaks down 

 and decays. All catch crops on the orchard should be plowed under 

 just as soon as the ground is dry enough in the spring, for these 

 crops soon pump the water from the soil and cause it to bake and 

 cement together, and the longer they remain the more difiicult it is 

 to cause them to rot when turned under. Hard and woody herbage 

 plowed under late in the season, may remain as a foreign body in 

 the soil all summer, breaking the connection between the upper and 

 the lower soil and thereby preventing the upward movement of the 

 water and causing the top soil to completely dry out. The chief 

 value of crimson clover, rye, or other catch crop in the orchard, 

 lies in its fall growth and its protection of the soil in winter, not in 

 its growth in spring. 



h. Tillage should generally he stopped in late summer or very 

 early fall. — The tree has completed its growth. It must now ripen 

 and prepare for winter. It can spare some of the moisture which 

 comes with the fall rains. We may, therefore, sow some catch or 

 cover crop. This crop will, if properly plowed under, greatly 

 improve the mechanical condition of the soil ; its roots will catch 

 some of the leaching nitrates, of which the roots of the trees are 

 now in little need ; it will catch the rains and snows of fall and 

 winter and hold them until they gradually percolate into the earth; 

 it will prevent the puddling and cementing of the soil during 

 winter ; it will dry out the soil quickly in spring, if the plant is one 



