PROCEEDINGS OF THE ANNUAL MEETING 195 



the ifjnoiiiiu of the j^ood of the coramniiil y for tlie sake of the good of the 

 individual which -vve see i)hiinly is sapijing our national life. 



Mr. Allen: Let me just merely come back to the matter of apples in 

 Gratiot county. I think from what I liave seen that Gratiot county 

 would be a jiood one for apple-jirowinfi-, but when I come to think of what 

 we have had before us the last few days. I do not think there was a farmer 

 present last night, who saw how carefully the orchards had been cultiva- 

 ted, that can bring to mind an apple orchard in Gratiot county that has 

 ever been cultivated for apples. fc>o far as 1 have seen, all the apple 

 orchards are in grass, and liave been so for years. It is very seldom 

 they are plowed, but how they are going to continue to grow' grass in the 

 orchards and grow apples also, and not invite the insects, and expect to 

 get crops of a])ples, I can not undersland. I do not Ihink there is any 

 other reason that we do not have big crops of fine apples any more, than 

 that W'e do not attend to the growing of them. 



Dr. Beal: I would like to call on Prof. Taft to state what he thinks 

 about growing grass or sod among apple trees in Michigan, under any 

 circumstances. He has made some experiments and been over the state 

 a good deal. 



Prof. Taft: I think that as a rule you get the best results if you have 

 the orchards under cultivation. There are possibly a few instances, on 

 some soils and in certain locations, where you could meet with fair success 

 with sod around the trees; but taking the average orchard land, the 

 trees need everything there is in the soil. In a dry season you are very 

 likely to have the crop shortened and the growth of the trees injured 

 by the grass taking the water and plant food that the tree needs. I 

 have seen some soils where I thought it would answer, for a part of the 

 time at least, to have an ordinary meadow in the orchard. I have seen 

 this in some of the deep, rich loam soils that were naturally moist, where 

 the trees did perhaps fully as well as the ordinary orchards under cultiva- 

 tion, but those are few and far between. So far as my own experiments 

 go, to illustrate the benefit of cultivation, as it seems to me I should show 

 by this, I for a number of years kept one side of a large orchard at the 

 college in sod. We took off the first crop of hay and the trees there were 

 noticed to be affected by this sod. As compared with the trees in the same 

 orchard just beyond, in the adjoining rows, some varieties were of a very 

 pale yellowish-green color; the fruit as a rule was quite small, and in every 

 w'ay the trees did not make the showing that the others did; and, com- 

 paring our own orchard that is kept cultivated, with the neighboring 

 orchards, I can see there is a great difference in the quantity of fruit 

 and its size. Of course, the spraying perhaps has something to do with 

 this last case, for we have sprayed the orchard while many of the or- 

 chards around there are not sprayed; but, comparing the sod land with 

 the cultivated land that had the same conditions so far as spraying and 

 other care was concerned, those who went through the orchards as I 

 did each year and noticed the result of having the sod, were, I think, 

 convinced that it did not pay, at least on that kind of soil. There are 

 other soils, too, where it might be well, possibly, to sow peas or some- 

 thing of that kind in the spring and have the hogs kept there after the 

 fruit commences to drop from the trees. In that case they work the ground 

 over and at the time when the tree wants most of the moisture, it can 

 get it all right; at the same time, the hogs go after the worms in the fallen 



