Management of Orchard Soils. 141 



MANAGEMENT OF ORCHARD SOILS. 



Prof. L. B. Judson, University of Idaho, Moscow, Idaho. Read at Northwest 

 Fruit Growers' Meeting, Portland, January, 1904. 



We pride ourselves that we live in a progressive era, that as fruit growers 

 we have so far distanced the men of a generation or two ago that they seem 

 to belong to a past age, as they do in fact to a past century ; and it is true that 

 we no longer hopelessly stand by and wring our hands while the festive worm 

 defoliates our trees, or leisurely eats his way through the tender pulp of the 

 fruit ; that we do not allow an insignificant little plant called scab to blacken 

 and distort our choicest fruit while we know nothing to do but pray the 

 Almighty to deliver at least some part of the crop from the Philistines ; nay, 

 that we no longer allow our orchard to grow up to rank grass and weeds in 

 whose grateful shade the hogs may luxuriate. In fact, we have become too 

 scientific to resort to such crude practices, and are not nearly so ready as 

 formerly to pooh-pooh "college" or "paper" farming and "theories" about agri- 

 culture by men who perhaps never grasped a plow handle. Yet there lie 

 ahead far larger and richer fields than any that have yet been conquered, 

 improvements and devices that we yet dream not of, and in the subduing of 

 these science must still be our leader and almost sole dependence. Do you 

 fully realize that in the last fifty years farming has advanced more than in 

 the preceding five thousand? And what is the reason of this? That the search- 

 light of science, the piercing rays from brains quickened by careful scientific 

 training, have been turned upon this field, lighting up its dark corners and 

 obscure places, justifying many practices with sound reasons, condemning 

 others, and suggesting many new and vastly improved ones. It has given us 

 new and better varieties of all kinds of produce — think of the marvelous work 

 of Luther Burbank alone — enlightened us as to the requirements of plant life 

 and the management of soils, found remedies for the destructive pests that 

 have threatened to scourge us like the plagues of Egypt, and for every perplexed 

 question has had ready an answer more true and satisfying than any ever 

 rendered by oracle of old at Dodona or Delphi. 



And just recently scientific horticulture made a marked advance when 

 the Society for Horticultural Science was founded at Boston last September, 

 having for its object the advancement of the more purely scientific side of 

 horticulture, and including in its membership most of the prominent horticul- 

 turists in the country. This ought to systematize and put on a firmer basis 

 many of the ideas and practices now popularly adhered to, or show sound 

 reasons for discarding them. At the holiday meeting of this Society — the first 

 since its organization — the chief topic of discussion was the very one we are 

 now considering, namely, "the principles underlying the practice of tillage, 

 together with the use of cover crops in orchards," showing the prominence of 

 the subject in the thoughts of horticultural workers at this time. 



Not many years ago it was the fashion to let the orchard, after giving it a 

 good start, take care of itself , and grow a crop of weeds and grass just as it 

 good start, take care of itself, and grow a crop of weeds and grass just as it 

 much care of the soil as corn or potatoes, if not more, and a diversity of 

 theories and practices have sprung up in the attempt to find the best treatment. 



