FORTY-FOURTH ANNUAL REPORT. 17 



THE SOD MULCH ORCHARD. 



MR. RALPH BALLARD^ NILES^ MICH. 



There has been so much misunderstanding' of this term that perhaps it 

 would be well, at first, to get a clear idea of just what is meant by it. 



Fifteen or more years ago a man named Grant Hitchings, living near 

 Syracuse, New York, awakened much interest among fruit growers by 

 his (then new) system of orchard management which he called sod 

 mulch. 



By this system the orchard is seeded to grass as soon as planted or 

 even before, and it is never plowed thereafter. The only care consists in 

 mowing the grass once or twice during the growing season, throw- 

 ing it up around the trees as a mulch until the young trees get well 

 started, after which it is allowed to lie where it falls. 



This is the real sod mulch system which has made Mr. Hitchings' 

 orchard so famous, he having been awarded more prizes in the last 

 fifteen years on apples from his orchard, than have been awarded to any 

 other orchard in the Empire State, the greatest apple growing state in 

 the Union. 



Tlie Geneva, N. Y., Experiment Station has been carrying on com- 

 ])arative experiments with sod mulch and cultivation in the Hitchings' 

 and also in the Auchter orchards, covering a period of ten years. We 

 will refer to this experiment from time to time. 



At the same time the Hitchings' orchard was attracting attention in 

 New York, Mr. F. P. Vergon, of Delaware County, Ohio, was creating a 

 stir among Ohio growers by his method of orchard management which 

 Avas identical with the Hitchings method, only he went a step farther, 

 and, instead of relying entirely on the grass grown on the land, made 

 use of a supplemental mulch of straAV or other litter around the trees, 

 allowing the grass to lie where it fell when cut. This is the method we 

 have used in our orchards for the last nine or ten years. 



We have three blocks of Duchess apples designated as No. 1, No. 2, 

 and No. 3 respectively. All are situated on rough, hilly land, which is 

 glacial drift soil varying in composition from heavy clay to gravel and 

 sand. 



At the time we began mulching. No. 1 was in sod and had been for 

 twenty or more years, but during that time more or less hay had been 

 removed and the balance of the time the laud had been pastured, so 

 that the soil was hard and dry and deficient in humus. The trees in 

 this two-acre plot are now forty-nine years old. No. 2, a three-and-a-half- 

 acre plot was fifteen years old and cultivated without cover crops except 

 weeds, which make a poor crop, but better than none. It had been 

 planted on land that had been in apples for twenty years or more. The 

 old trees had died and been removed and after two or three years of 

 farm crop the land was again set to apples. 



No. 3 was six years old when we began mulching and an attempt had 

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