New York Agricultural Experiment Station. 505 



5th. Economic conditions may decide the choice between tillage 

 and some mulching treatment, since the cost of caring for an orchard 

 is so much less under the Hitchings mode of mulching than by 

 tillage. Thus a larger acreage in sod may be made to counter- 

 balance a greater productiveness under tillage, thereby bringing 

 the net income to the same level. 



INTRODUCTORY. 



In March, 1909, this Station published, in Bulletin No. 314, a 

 preliminary report on a comparative test of growing apples under 

 tillage and the Hitchings sod-mulch method. The work of which 

 this first report is an account was carried on in the Auchter orchard 

 a few miles west of Rochester, in the heart of the apple belt of western 

 New York. In this orchard tillage was found to be the better treat- 

 ment. In the present Bulletin, the second report, the test was con- 

 ducted in the Hitchings orchard, near Syracuse, under widely dif- 

 ferent conditions and as we shall see with very different results. 



the hitchings orchard. 



The Hitchings apple orchard is unique among the fruit planta- 

 tions of New York. The trees have been planted, pruned and sprayed, 

 the soil treated and the fruit harvested in very original ways. It 

 has the distinction of having produced in the last fifteen years more 

 prize-winning apples at the annual State fairs in New York than 

 any other orchard in the State. In it originated the Hitchings sod- 

 mulch method of growing apples which made the orchard at once 

 a debating ground as to the merits of the method. The lay of the 

 land and the soil, as we shall see, are also unique. Commendations 

 and condemnations of Mr. Hitchings' methods in the press and on 

 the platform have given the orchard distinction not only throughout 

 New York but wherever apples are grown in the United States. 



THE NEED OF A COMPARATIVE TEST. 



It early became evident that before there could be a satisfactory 

 interpretation of his results there must be some systematic study 

 of Mr. Hitchings' work. The published and verbal accounts of 

 visitors, founded usually upon a few hours' stay, were seldom adequate 

 and were often distinctly misleading. To obtain a fuller and more 



