THIRTY-SEVENTH ANNUAL REPORT. 53 



there, very wet in the spring — now by mulching, the grass will be there grow- 

 ing up and taking part of that water out of the soil, and I believe mulching 

 would be a good thing for it. On a very dry soil or in a dry season, I must 

 stand convinced that on the typical soil of Western New York they have 

 got me on the sod mulch. There is no cjuestion about it. When you go 

 and see an apple that size (showing an apple) and another one bigger than 

 my fist, on trees growing in that way, and absolutely no difference in the 

 world that you can point out, except that half of the orchard is tilled and 

 that half of the orchard was not, it will convince everybody but a blind man, 

 and I don't know but you woulcl convince him if you could take him through 

 the orchard. I think, however, as I say, that that experiment does not 

 show it all. Professor. No, I think not. I should like to have others try 

 it. (Applause.) 



Mr. Post: I have been experimenting on this line a few years, and Prof. 

 Taft has been up there a few times, and there is one thing you have not hit 

 on exactly, either one of you, I think, and that is, working half the ground. 

 I presume Mr. Hale will make fun about that, but I don't care, you know, 

 and he will think it is kind of half doing one thing or the other. I leave 

 a strip — part of my ground is hilly, some of it is not so hilly; part of it is 

 quite steep; it is good soil, a dry soil; it is not that damp soil; it would not 

 do to leave that in sod right along; it would all dry up in the hot weather 

 in the summer. I can go through and plough that all excepting a strip, 

 for instance, from four to six feet wide; it won't wash. I won't cut that sod 

 all out of there, but I will break it up; I won't leave it in sod then; I will 

 reverse it and plough it the other way ; but I will leave a strip there ; and I 

 will say that my orchard this year is just as thrifty as it ought to be; it is 

 just coming into the bearing age, about fifteen years of age; and it was grow- 

 ing too rapidly and I seeded it down one year and left it there, and it checked 

 it a little, and I had about 5,000 bushels off it.. 



Mr. Simmons: I will tell you where I think you all make your mistake. 

 In starting out, instead of mowing your grass twice or three times each 

 season, you let that grass mature. 



Prof. Hediick: We mow it twice. 



Mr. Simmons: And you fertihze it? You have to make up for what vou 

 kill. 



Prof. Hedrick: We fertilize parts of both plats clear across. 



Mr. Simmons: I think that is a great mistake many make, in letting 

 their grass mature, and mature seed, and that draws heavily on the land. 

 I am not a sod mulch man, and I feed cattle in the winter, and we draw all 

 the manure we can get and I buy all the straw stacks I can buy and all the 

 poor hay I can buy, and I put it in my orchard, and I will say I am having 

 fair success in that way; although I think where you have not sufficient 

 fertilizer, that cultivation is the great thing, and this year especially, with 

 the dry weather we had; if we had cultivated, I think we would have got 

 larger sized fruit by it; though our apples, it is almost impossible to get a 

 color on the face of the red apples that is satisfactory to the buyer, b}^ culti- 

 vati ng them. 



Mr. Briggs: We have two acres of orchard that has been in sod mulch 

 for thirty years. The past year I returned all barnyard manure to it. It 

 is now in mulch, and has been right along. It has borne very heavily; is 

 I think forty-two years old. These two acres this year brought in $750 an 

 acre . I suppose that by cultivation it would have brought in $1,500. Our 

 you ng orchards we have sod mulched. We started them that way, and they 



