140 STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



instead of Paris green. With this work properly done the apple scab and codling moth 

 may be quite thorouglily controlled. 



The day has probably passed when apples can be profitably grown on a commercial 

 scale without some attention to the conservation of moisture. If the orchard ground 

 is needed for pasture more of this can be had by cutting down the trees, and perhaps the 

 net profit from the ground will be as large. The meth()d of cultivation will be governed 

 by circumstances. If the orchard areas is not too large and straw can be procured at not 

 too great cost a mulch of this will serve an excellent purpose both as a means of retaining 

 the moisture in the soil and furnishing humus. But in most cases cultivation will be about 

 the only feasible recourse. And there is no danger of commencing it too early in the 

 season after the ground is in suitable condition to work. The production of fine apples 

 requires as careful and thorough attention to cultivation as does that of the best corn. 

 The ground should be stirred early and frequently, though shallow, until August. The 

 grass mulch may serve a good purpose on a steep hill side or other place where cultivation 

 is not practicable but it has not been successfully worked out on a general scale as a sub- 

 stitute for horse cultivation on ground where this is feasible. 



And closely allied to the matter of cultivation is that of fertilization, for where this 

 has proper attention the work of maintaining a suitable earth mulch is rendered much 

 easier. But this is probably the most serious problem that the orchardist has to meet. 

 I am convinced that the main demand of cultivated orchards is humus. Any soil that 

 is constantly worked, as orchards are, and nothing added in the way of fertilizers soon 

 looses the vegetable matter in it and satisfactory crops of any kind could not be expected 

 from it. Suppose, for instance, that the attempt were made to grow corn on a piece of 

 ground for a series of years. From no ordinary ground could a profitable crop be grown 

 for very long. But after thus being improvished until it would no longer grow corn it 

 may be put in to oats and seeded down. The oats may be taken off and still further 

 impoverish the soil fertility, and yet if there is enough plant food to produce a sod this 

 may be turned down and com may be again grown on this ground without the addition 

 of anything in the way of artificial fertilization. Such is the effect of vegetable matter 

 in the soil in the production of crops. Similar results might be secured by the liberal use 

 of green stable manure. But without this element of humus no crop could be grown 

 with very much success even by the application of the various elements of plant food 

 found in commercial fertilizers. This being the case with ordinary farm crops it is not 

 reasonable to expect that orchard trees growing on soils where the humus has been wholly 

 exhausted by a number of years of continuous cultivation will prove an exception to this 

 rule. Where cultivation has been neglected and the orchard allowed to stand in sod 

 the condition is not so serious, but where constant and thorough cultivation is practiced 

 this condition exists and is more and more aggravated as the practice is continued. And 

 if the old sod is broken up and the expectation is to keep up a system of thorough cultiva- 

 tion this condition must be anticipated. The ad\ace is frequently given to apply stable 

 manure to the orchard, and this is good for the orchard soil, but bad for the other ground 

 which produced the crops from which this manure was made. Farmers who make a 

 business of raising stock would not for a moment entertain the suggestion of selling any 

 of their manure off from the farm. Neither stock men nor dairymen make any more 

 manure than they want to put back on their land, and to take it off from that land and 

 put it on the orchard is no better on the land that produced it than is selling it or removing 

 it in any other way. It is evident, then, that dependence on the stable for fertilizer for 

 the orchard is not a wise practice. At home we have to buy much of the feed that we use 

 so we feel justified in putting the manure on the orchards but we keep too few animals 

 to produce very much so that this supply does not go far. We have at different times 

 experimented with commercial fertilizers but without visible results. Last season we 

 only used a ton of a very fair grade of prepared fertilizer in various experiments but so 

 far as we have been able to discover this far we are out just the cost of the material and 

 the cost of applying it. We have used it with the hope of increasing the growth of the 

 cover crop late in the season but could detect no difference between the fertilized and 

 unfertilized ground in this respect. Some may contend that this is because there was 

 plenty of plant food in the soil already, but I am inclined to attribute it to a lack of humus. 



We may in part restore this element by the use of cover crops that shall entrap the leaves 

 as tliey fall, and the deterioration will be less rapid if the work is commenced before hvmius 

 exhaustion has advanced very far, as a much larger crop of this kind may be grown if 

 the work is taken up early, and systeinatically carried on from the tim.e the sod is first 

 broken up. And the kind of crop we attempt to grow is important. Last summer I 

 sowed my apple orchards to German millet just after the la«t good rain in August but a 

 severe drouth succeeded and the seeding was a total failure. The ground was in fine 

 condition to go through the drouth but the loss of the cover crop and the consequent loss 



