•No. 6, DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 605 



upon a soil which contributes most ideally to its production will 

 have little or no competition from the same variety grown upon a 

 soil less suited to its requirements. 



Now, in g-eneral orchard planting, the intelligent farmer has suc- 

 ceeded in avoiding such hilly localities as are underlain by flat rock 

 formations of sandstone or shale. This refers particularly to the 

 shale hills where the shale lies close to the surface. And he has also 

 avoided low, flat and poorly-drained areas — that is, he has shunned 

 the extreme soil conditions which were manifestly not adapted to 

 fruit growing. But how is he going to avoid soils which judged by 

 the same outward manifestations, should be good, whereas they are 

 actually unsuited to orcharding? For the texture and structure of 

 soils in their under strata is frequently such as to produce precisely 

 the same or similar effect on the growth of the orchard and the 

 quality of the fruit, as the thin or wet conditions already mentioned. 

 So let us consider for a few moments the soil preferences of a few 

 representative varieties and for this purpose I have chosen varieties 

 to illustrate the general range of adaptation from the heavy to the 

 light soils. 



The first variety to be considered is the Rhode Island Greening, 

 which you do not want to grow in this immediate vicinity, but in the 

 northern part of the State, wiiere the soil is different, it is a good 

 variety; also, in New York and in New England. The Rhode Island 

 Grreening does best on a heavy, silty loam surface soil, with enough 

 organic content to give it a dark brown color, but not enough to give 

 it the black color of the Albemarle Pippin soil. The subsoil may 

 range from a heavy silt loam to a silty clay loam, that is a subsoil 

 rather heavy, but still plastic and workable, not stiff and intractable. 

 A good moist, yet well drained, corn and grass soil that produces at 

 least a moderate growth of corn, which retains a good green color 

 until harvesting; 



If we go farther south, in Pennsylvania and West Virginia, etc., 

 this soil is also the ideal for the Grimes — an apple of high quality 

 which has become very popular, and is being planted extensively in 

 the region mentioned. 



For the Northern Spy much the same kind of soil is desired, only it 

 should be a little less moist, i. e., with just a little lower content of 

 clay and silt — nor can it utilize quite as low positions as the Green- 

 ing, and it needs more sunlight to bring its most desirable color and 

 flavor. I might relate an occurrence which happened in Western 

 New York a few days ago, when I made a statement similar to thivS 

 about the Northern Spy. A man brought me a couple of Spies, 

 and asked me what I though of them. I said they were as fine on 

 the exterior as any I had ever seen, finely colored and well devel- 

 oped. He said: ''I grew them on the soil that you said was not 

 adapted to them." I said: "It looks as if I was mistaken then, 

 doesn't it?" Now we know that the flesh of this variety should 

 be very tender and juicy, with crisp texture and high flavor. We 

 cut one of those apples and found it very coarse-grained, the flavor 

 was not good, and it lacked the tender, juicy quality, characteristic 

 of the Northern Spy. This illustrated very forcibly, I thought, that 

 the Northern Spy has a preference for certain soil conditions. 



33 



