506 Report of the Department of Horticulture of the 



accurate collation of facts than those circulated by casual visitors, 

 the New York Agricultural Experiment Station in 1903 rented for 

 ten years plats for experimental work in the Hitchings orchards. 

 The plats were selected in the autumn of the year named by Pro- 

 fessor S. A. Beach, then Horticulturist of the Station, the chief end 

 in view being a comparison of the Hitchings sod-mulch method 

 with the more usual one of tillage and cover crops. 



After carrying on the work two years Professor Beach left New 

 York and the work fell into the hands of the writer, the succeeding 

 Horticulturist. The Station's ten year tenure has just passed and 

 this Bulletin is an account of a comparison for a decade, side by 

 side, of tillage and the Hitchings sod-mulch method in the Hitchings 

 orchard. 



THE HITCHINGS METHOD DEFINED. 



What is the Hitchings method? The term has become the sound- 

 symbol for a mixture of more or less vague practices connected with 

 sod in an orchard: sod pastured with sheep, hogs or cows; sod of blue- 

 grass, orchard-grass, clover, alfalfa, or weeds; sod from which the 

 grass is cut for hay, or cut and piled about the trees, or left uncut; 

 sod supplemented by straw, manure or other by-products; sod the 

 growth of years and sod turned under more or less frequently. This 

 confusion has spread obscurity over much that has been said about 

 the method. Since our experiment is a comparison of tillage with 

 sod mulching as carried on by Mr. Hitchings, his method, now to 

 be described, and none of the modifications suggested above, must 

 be kept in mind. 



No easier treatment of the soil in an orchard, short of down- 

 right neglect, could be devised than the Hitchings method. It 

 consists in laying the ground down to sod before or as soon as the 

 trees are set and cutting the grass for a mulch once or twice, as 

 conditions may demand, during each summer. The orchard is 

 supposed to remain in sod indefinitely, plowing being detrimental 

 to the formation of the mulch which is essential in the treatment. 

 The cut grass is never removed from the land and until roots and 

 branches utilize the space between plants it is raked and piled about 

 the trees. Many who grow apples in sod supplement the cut grass 

 with straw or similar material as a mulch about the trees — desir- 

 able, of coarse, but not practiced by Mr. Hitchings and not prac- 



