New York Agricultural Experiment Station. 913 



situations in which sod may be given preference over tillage should 

 be set forth with exactitude. 



1st. Orchards on steep hillsides where land would wash badly under 

 tillage may be kept in sod. — -There are few commercial apple orchards 

 in New York in which cultivation may not be so managed that 

 soil erosion will not interfere seriously with the tillage-and-cover-crop 

 system. It is probable that clover or some other legume might be 

 substituted advantageously for the blue grass and orchard grass 

 of the Hitchings method where sod is desired to keep water from 

 wearing the land away. 



2d. Land covered with rocks, whether steep or not, must often be 

 kept in sod because of the impossibility of tilling. — There are not a 

 few such orchards in New York. 



3d. The Hitchings method is best suited to soils having considerable 

 depth. — It is adapted only to soils in which grass roots and tree 

 root do not come in too intimate contact and too direct competition 

 for food and moisture. The commercial apple orchards of New 

 York are at present on lands the top soil of which averages less than 

 a foot in depth. On these shallow soils the Hitchings method will 

 prove a failure. 



4th. Soils must be retentive of moisture. — To sustain trees at 

 their best under the Hitchings method, soils must not only be deep but 

 must be very retentive of moisture, or have the water table com- 

 paratively close to the root run of the trees, or, as in the case of 

 the orchards under discussion, must be fed by seepage from higher 

 ground nearby. On land that suffers from summer drouths, this 

 sod-mulch treatment will almost certainly prove less beneficial to 

 trees than tillage. 



5th. Economic conditions may decide the choice between tillage and 

 some mulching treatment. — The cost of caring for a sodded orchard 

 is materially less, under this mode of mulching at least, than by 

 tillage. If, then, a man chooses to grow apples extensively, rather 

 than intensively, he may make larger acreage in sod counterbalance 

 greater production under tillage thereby bringing the cost of pro- 

 duction to the same level. 



Thp Ipqqon of ^ e c ^ e ^ l esson taught by the Hitchings orchard, 

 the Hitching with its unique features, is that a man may break 

 orchard away from the common practice, when circum- 



stances render such practices difficult or impos- 

 sible, and yet attain a high degree of success. The method of orchard- 

 ing which takes its name from the Hitchings orchard is not as valu- 

 able to the fruit-growers of New York as is the demonstration by 

 Mr. Hitchings that new paths to success may be blazed — new 

 practices devised to meet new conditions, old obstacles overcome 

 in new ways. It is a splendid and successful example of resourceful 

 pioneering and of persistent endeavor to attain the highest success. 

 The pith and the point of the work in this orchard, so different from 

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