532 Report of the Department of Horticulture of the 



INTRODUCTION. 



A few years ago it was thought that some method of growing 

 apples in sod might take the place of cultivation in the orchards 

 of New York. The Hitchings method of cutting the grass and 

 letting it lie as a mulch seemed to meet the conditions in this State 

 better than any other of the sod or mulch systems and in response 

 to a popular demand this Station began a comparative test of tillage 

 and the Hitchings sod-mulch method in two orchards. The two tests 

 were begun in 1903, and in 1909 a preliminary report was made in 

 Bulletin No. 314 of one of the experiments, that in the Auchter 

 orchard near Rochester, and in Bulletin No. 375, published in March, 

 1914, a complete report was made of the other test which was carried 

 on in the Hitchings orchard near Syracuse. This is, therefore, the 

 third account of these orchard-management experiments and is 

 given to complete the preliminary report of 1909 of the work in the 

 Auchter orchard. 



THE AUCHTER ORCHARD EXPERIMENTS. 



LOCATION. 



The orchard in which the experiment under discussion was carried 

 on is located on the farm of W. D. Auchter, Elmgrove, New York, 

 seven miles west of Rochester. The site is in the center of the 

 great apple belt of western New York. The orchard was selected 

 because it was the most typical one to be found in topography, soil, 

 variety of apples and in condition at the beginning of the experiment. 



The land lies in a rolling plain, one of the ridges of which begins 

 at about the center of the west end of the orchard and runs diagonally 

 lengthwise towards the southeast corner. From this low and 

 somewhat stony ridge the land falls gently away both north and 

 south. About an acre in the southwest corner of the orchard is more 

 depressed than the rest of the field, dropping at the lowest point 

 fifteen feet from the summit of the ridge. This lowland is tile 

 drained but artificial drainage for the rest of the orchard is not 

 needed. 



