THIRTY-SEVENTH ANNUAL REPORT. 51. 



second year the tilled plat gave the greater niynber of barrels of fruit; the 

 third year the tilled plat bore 530 more barrels of fruit, while the sod mulch 

 plat bore only 210 barrels of fruit: more than double the quantity of fruit on 

 the tilled orchard than on the sod mulch plat. This year again we have had 

 nearly double the quantity of fruit on the tilled plat that we have on the sod 

 mulch plat. In dollars and cents this year we have taken from the tilled 

 plat a little over $1,200 and from the sod mulch plat of five acres, a little 

 less than .S600; so that we have, while we have doubled the yield we have 

 doubled the amount of money that we have taken from the two plate. By 

 the way, those figures give you an idea of what ten acres of apples can do; 

 and when I tell you our experiment station pays the lessor $1,000 a year 

 for this ten acre orchard, and that they pay $500 a year for taking care of it, 

 $300 for supervision, and $200 for labor, for ten years, you will see what 

 an apple orchard is worth, even when half of it is grossly mismanaged by 

 the sod mulch system. 



You can tell the difference as far as you can see the trees. A half mile from 

 the orchard you can see that the tilled trees have the greener foliage and 

 are making the longest growth; the annual growth is double on the tilled 

 plats that of the sod mulch tree. This particular orchard is, as I say, in the 

 heart of the western New York apple region, and is typical of all that great 

 region. 



In the Hitchins orchard — and I am not so familiar with the figures there — 

 the conditions are different. His orchard is on a sloping hillside and under- 

 laid with an impervious subsoil, so there is always water there; in June, 

 if you attempt to dig a post-hole in the Hitchins orchard, you will strike 

 water; and it is owing to this fact that Mr. Hitchins, I think, has the success 

 he does from the sod mulch trees; and there are orchards where with this 

 unbounded water supply sod mulch will do. And then again, on the steep 

 hillside farms that wash through cultivation, sod mulch will do there; but 

 for the commercial apple grower I am very sure that the tilled orchard is 

 the thing in Western New York. Mr. Collingwood is here, and I am going 

 to ask him to tell what he saw in that orchard. 



H. W. Collingwood: It does not take long, you know, to tell what you 

 don't know — or it takes a long time would be closer to it. 



Prof. Hedrick said I have been what we call a mulcher. For reasons 

 which seemed to me good, I thought it was better for me not to cultivate, 

 to plough, and harrow and till the ground around my trees. I must confess 

 that after I saw that orchard as Sough Cross I never was so thoroughly 

 tempted to go home and plough up the orchard as I was then. But after 

 I got home I began to think that thing over a little closer; I made up my 

 mind I would let my orchard go as it was a few years longer. Now I think 

 that Prof. Hedrick with his Geneva Experiment Station has, in conducting 

 that experiment, done a wonderful service to the people of Western New 

 York. There can be no question about it whatever. They have demon- 

 strated, in my judgment, absolutely beyond any question that if a man is 

 getting on now with high tillage, he ought to keep right on doing that; that 

 it would be a great folly for a man who was getting good results under high 

 tillage to seed down that orchard. Asked whether that proves to a man 

 who has a sod orchard that he ought to plough or cultivate, I think something 

 more is needed. I think the station should take into consideration an orchard 

 now in sod; I think they should take some old sod bound orchard — which 

 represents, as I believe, the great majority of orchards in Western New York 

 I think the station should take an orchard of that kind, plough up half of 



