No. 6. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 585 



should be given twice a week in times of drought; when this cul- 

 ture should cease and the orchard seeded down to cow peas, crimson 

 clover, soy beans or hairy vetch — these should be permitted to remain 

 on the soil until following spring, when they should be ploughed 

 under and this intense system of culture resumed. The advantages 

 of this system are that you grow the wood and buds for the fob 

 lowing^ season's crop in the early summer when they should be 

 grown, and the culture ceases when it should cease to afford oppor- 

 tunity for this wood and buds to harden and fully mature before 

 winter. Again, this cultural system makes it possible for the tree 

 to store up all the necessary plant food elements to fully mature 

 its fruit by the time the culture ceases. Again, the culture con- 

 serves the moisture, aerates the soil, and in pulverizing it exposes a 

 larger surface to the action of the oxygen of the air; thus eliminat- 

 ing phosphoric acid and potash in the soil and putting it in condition 

 for the operation of the feeding roots; without humus in the soil 

 and constant culture to conserve the moisture and the fining of the 

 soil it is impossible to maintain the moisture supply needed. 



The Illinois experimental station has determined that the amount 

 of moisture in soil cultivated as against soil not cultivated varies 

 from 13 to 27 per cent., or the cultivated soil will contain in an 

 acre 104,000 gallons to 153,000 gallons more water than the unculti- 

 vated soil. This added moisture, together with the air admitted 

 into the soil by culture unlocks the phosphoric acid and potash 

 and other mineral elements therein. The growing of legumes by 

 their root system going deep into the soil aerates it, so that the 

 plant food elements can also be eliminated. These crops improve 

 the mechanical condition of the soil by filling it with vegetable 

 matter and humus; this again makes soils alluvial or porous, ad- 

 mitting of the free passage of the soil waters, and retaining this 

 water to be taken up by the tree as required, and lastly it must be 

 remembered that a legume crop managed in this way in an orchard 

 will give to each acre 203 pounds of nitrogen, 49 pounds of phos- 

 phoric acid and 202 pounds of potash, valued in the market to-day 

 at $43.00. This amount of necessary plant food elements is there- 

 fore returned to the soil, less the amount required for the growth 

 of the crop itself, and such as may be eliminated in this process of 

 disintegration. 



In comparing these systems it can therefore be seen that the 

 intense cultural system not only supplies all natural requirements, 

 and that by growing the legumes at the season when tree growth 

 should cease and fruit maturity should be going forward, all nature's 

 laws are being fulfilled, the necessary plant food supplied without 

 any added artificial manures, and the economy and success of this 

 method clearly recognized. 



Dr. Warren, of the Cornell Station, shows that New York orchards 

 tilled five years yielded 80 per cent, more fruit than orchards left in 

 sod five years, where conditions were similar and substantially the 

 same. The question, therefore, of adopting a system that will bring 

 best results should be easy of solution. Location, conditions, en 

 vironment will necessitate some modification of any system that may 

 be adopted, but the principles as I have indicated must be observed 

 where regular annual crops of fruit of high quality are to be secured. 

 The best evidence of the advance that American Horticulture has 



