SECRETARY'S REPORT. 77 



planting his crops. Mr. W. IF. Ladd, late President of the 

 Ohio State Board of Agriculture, practices upon the same 

 principle, both with favorable results. Our own experience 



corresponds with theirs. 



An orchard should always be kept under cultivation, and no 

 other crop should ever be grown upon the soil, except when 

 the trees are small, and the roots occupy but a very limited 

 portion of the land. Even then, no additional crop should be 

 grown, unless it be a few vegetables midway between the rows. 



And when the trees arrive at maturity, cultivation should 

 not extend to a depth of more than three or four inches, never 

 allowing the grass or other crops to grow, never disturbing the 

 roots with the plough or spade. A celebrated orchardist of 

 Massachusetts, who sends annually a large quantity of fruit 

 to market, only scarifies the surface of the land, and upon it 

 applies his manure in the fall. The practice of seeding down 

 an orchard to grass or any other crop, and digging circles 

 around the trees, is believed to be of little or no comparative 

 benefit, and should be carefully avoided. 



An illustration from Mr. J. J. Thomas, one of the most 

 experienced fruit growers of New York, will explain the ration- 

 ale of this and of the influence of surface manuring. " I have," 

 says he, " long since discovered that spaded circles scarcely 

 benefit the tree : and a few years since I performed an exper- 

 iment to determine definitely the distance at which a tree 

 would draw nourishment through its roots. A dozen trees 

 of the same size and variety were set out on a piece of uniform 

 land, and were cultivated for a few years, until about ten feet 

 high. A portion of the trees were within three feet of a com- 

 post heap — the rest at various distances from it. Those stand- 

 ing nearest the compost made a summer's growth of four feet 

 and eight inches. The tree that stood seven feet off, almost as 

 far as the height of the tree, threw out shoots two feet and five 

 inches in length. The next, at a distance. of fifteen feet, made 

 fourteen inches in length — while all others, twenty or more 

 feet distant, grew but seven inches. 



Thus we see how much a tree was benefited, by a heap of 

 manure fifteen feet distant, and from which only a small 

 portion of the roots on one side could derive any nourishment 

 — proving conclusively that the roots extend on each side to 



