'64 AGRICULTURE OF MAINE. 



acre field. The next year follow with wheat, sowing the wheat 

 up within three or four feet of the trees, and sowing clover at 

 the same time. Then you can cultivate around the trees, and 

 have a crop of clover between the trees. The next year plow 

 the clover under. This makes a three years' rotation, — roots, 

 grain, clover. Anybody who ever raised potatoes or mangels 

 on a clover sod has found that that is the best condition. You 

 have nitrogen and lots of humus. Keep that up for nine years 

 and if you manage right you will make some money out of it. 

 There is a good deal more in the man than there is in the soil or 

 the surroundings or anything else. It is a business proposition. 

 One man will start in orcharding, in our country, where farms 

 are low and the climate favorable, and he will get a mortgage 

 on his farm, and another man starting at the same time will be 

 loaning him money. You cannot grow fruit and make money 

 out of it unless you study the fruit business and make it a busi- 

 ness proposition. A good many of our farmers know the truth 

 but they do not put it into practice. It may be that you have 

 heard repeated at institute meetings over and over again what 

 I have told you today, — sow a cover crop and maintain the 

 humus in your soil. You may hear that for the next ten years 

 but if you do not act upon it, it will not avail you much. 



Ques. If you had cHpped off the clover instead of raising 

 it for a crop, would it have dried out the land ? 



Ans. Yes ; you want the cultivation up to July to conserve 

 the moisture. 



Ques. What protection do you give young trees in the 

 winter? 



Ans. I would not give them any. We usually put out trees 

 three years of age. We do not put them on the top of the 

 ground and not away down in the subsoil but deep enough so 

 that they will have a good hole. I dig a good wide hole, with a 

 good distance around it, and then I take some of the top earth 

 that is richer than the other soil and take a couple of quarts of 

 commercial fertilizer and mix it all through that top soil and 

 then I get down on my knees (for once) and plant the tree 

 and put the fertilized soil around it. The trees never stop 

 growing, and we never bank them. It is ruinous to put straw 

 or anything of that kind around them because the mice will eat 

 the bark. 



