56 AGRICULTURE OF MAINE. 



doxical statement is not as bad as it sounds, and I will attempt 

 to make my position clear to you as the subject is developed. 



In profitable fruit production, there are many factors that 

 have to be taken into consideration. No one factor is alone 

 resj)onsible for success, although it may be that the absence of 

 one necessary factor may account for failure. Many men are 

 apt to over-emphasize one factor and neglect another. One 

 man may devote all his energies to successful spraying, another 

 to cultivation, yet both may be successful apple growers. Each 

 of these men will have his theory about the proper way to treat 

 an apple orchard and insist that the other fellow is wrong. 

 The man who practices the sod mulch system cries aloud, that 

 all may bear, that sod mulch is the best way to handle an or- 

 chard ; another one says that cultivation is the only way, and 

 straightway they fall io arguing as to which is right. They fill 

 the air with words and the Experiment Station bulletins and 

 farm papers with printer's ink, neither recognizing that under 

 certain conditions they may both be right. In general, they 

 overlook the fact that moisture is the key note to both their 

 methods. The sooner orchardists and experimenters learn to 

 stop generalizing from the behavior of certain pieces of orchard 

 land under their immediate supervision, the sooner will we have 

 safe and sane methods of orchard culture. Personally, I am a 

 great believer in the "clean-culture cover-crop method" of man- 

 aging an orchard, yet I recognize the fact that there are many 

 thousands of orchards that can be more profitably and eco- 

 nomically handled under the sod mulch system. It is largely a 

 question of water and plant food. It has been my experience 

 both through experimentation and observation that the two 

 great limiting factors in fruit production are moisture and nitro- 

 gen. Yet this is not necessarily always the case. 



Perhaps at this point, I can do no better than spend a few 

 moments in discussing the so-called law of the minimum. 

 Roughly expressed, it is thait no plant can prosper beyond a 

 certain point which is defined by the available amount of all of 

 the factors necessary for its full development. If any of these 

 factors be deficient the plant can prosper only so far as this 

 factor is present. For example, in plant growth there are about 

 thirteen plant food elements necessary for proper development 

 of the plant. If one of these, say iron, is deficient in the soil, 

 the plant can develop only so far, regardless of the fact that all 



