New York Agricultural Experiment Station. 523 



maturity of leaves must coincide more or less with the ripening 

 of fruit, we should expect, as has been the case in the Hitchings 

 orchard, that the fruit would ripen earliest on the trees dropping 

 their leaves soonest. On the other hand the lighter tints of maturing 

 leaves and the earlier dropping of foliage give conditions under 

 which the apples take on higher colors. 



SURFACE WASH. 



Plats B and C, it will be remembered, are on a fairly steep hill- 

 side. Since surface wash is one of the chief objections to tillage 

 on hillsides, the tilled plats have been under close observation to 

 see what harm might be done by washing. In none of the reports 

 of any of the many visits made by various metabers of the Station 

 staff, nor in any of the reports from Mr. Hitchings, is it shown that 

 the tilled plats have suffered harm from washing. It must be said, 

 however, that the cultivated plats are so narrow that washing would 

 hardly take place as it might do on a wider area. 



This opportunity cannot be permitted to pass without stating 

 the writer's opinion that the danger from surface washing on hilly 

 lands in New York is greatly exaggerated. Torrential rains are 

 comparatively infrequent in this State, orchard lands usually are 

 more or less stony and stones impede washing, and June and July, 

 the months that orchards are tilled, constitute but a short time, at 

 a season of the year when rains are all too few, for washing to take 

 place. A rather wide observation in the fruit-growing regions of 

 New York has not shown many tilled orchards that wash badly. 

 After several more years in observing orchards on hillsides in this 

 State we can reiterate with emphasis the following statements made 

 in Bulletin 314, page 112, in regard to washing on orchard lands. 



" The land in the Auchter orchard is rolling, though nowhere are 

 the slopes steep. In this respect it is a fair average of the apple 

 orchards of western New York. At no time has there been any 

 harmful surface wash in either of the two plats and we have not, 

 therefore, had an opportunity to observe in this orchard the influence 

 of cultivation on surface wash. Since tillage is objected to on hilly 

 ground because it is supposed to favor surface wash, it may not be 

 out of place to give observations from elsewhere in this regard. 



" In all but the steepest locations in the climate and on the soils 

 of New York, embracing practically all sites upon which trees can 



