BetteW/Fruit 



The Pioneer HorUcuHural Jourtidtl of the Pacific Northwest 



Entered as second-class matter April 22, 1918, at the Postoffice at Portland, Oregon, under act 



of Congress of March 3, 1879 



Vol. XVI 



Portland, Oregon, May, 1922 



Number 11 



Orchard Cultivation and Improvement 



By O. M. Morris, 



Head of HorticiiUuriil Department, State College of \V aihliigton, Piillnuui 



THE FRUIT trees of our common 

 orchards and gardens all grow well 

 in good soil. There are extreme 

 types of soil in which it is necessary to 

 select special varieties for adaption, but 

 ordinarily any good agricultural soil will 

 produce good fruit trees if the climate is 

 favorable to their development. The fi- 

 nancial returns are the more definitely 

 limiting factors to the distribution of 

 orchards than the possibility of growing the 

 trees. The local surrounding conditions 

 that give opportunity for the trees to 

 develop fruit crops regularly are usually 

 the limiting factors to orchard planting. 



Wood growth and fruit production are 

 normal activities and in no respects is it 

 necessary to secure an abnormal develop- 

 ment of a fruit tree in order that fruit pro- 

 duction may be accomplished. Soils that 

 have produced plants for a long period of 

 time, providing those plants have not been 

 burned or carried away, are usually suf- 

 ficientlv loaded with humus to make good 

 fruit lands. 



Tillage is one of the best fertilizers that 

 can ordinarily be applied to land that is 

 growing annual crops. This is especially 

 true with soils that are of a clay loam or 

 clay type. Any land that tends to melt or 

 puddle is clearly benefited by carefully 

 developed tillage practices. The normal 

 breaking of the soil, pulverizing, aerating 

 and mixing gives better opportunity for the 

 normal chemical processes of plant food 

 development to take place. The tillage 

 must not be of such a character as to remove 

 the depth of tilled soil from the use of 

 the plants, but rather of such a type as once 

 a year to work over, mix and pulverize the 

 soil to a depth reached by the air in the 

 normal quick changes of climate. 



Our tree crops are different from our 

 annual crops in that if they are to utilize 

 the fertility contained in the normal sur- 

 face soil the tillage processes must be de- 

 veloped so that the root material develop- 

 ing in the surface soil will not all be de- 

 stroyed each year. 



Great progress has been made in orchard 

 development in the last few years. Our 



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I Do you know hozv to go abo-ut test- | 



I ing your orchard soil to learn zchat | 



I flant food ele?nents it lacks? Lots | 



I of groupers do not. If you haffen | 



I to be one of these be sure to read the | 



I soil testing methods Professor Morris \ 



I giz'es in this article. It zcill be of I 



I interest to every orchardist to read | 



I zchat he has to say of the rather fre- \ 



I valent theory that a different sort of | 



I flant food is needed to develof^ \ 



I fruits than is required for tree \ 



I growth. Hozcez'er ?nuch the title I 



I m-ay sm\ick of "old stuff," the reader \ 



I zuill find that Professor Morris is \ 



I giz'ing fresent-day trends and ideas. | 



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processes of tillage ha\-e changed from that 

 of using the orchard as a pasture or meadow 

 land to the extreme of constant clean till- 

 age, thus preventing any other growth in 

 the orchard. From this we are swinging 

 back in many regions to the opposite and 

 encouraging a growth of vegetation to cover 

 the ground. This crop falls and decavs on 

 the surface year after year without disturb- 

 ing processes of tillage other than that 

 which is necessary to take care of irrigation 

 or other peculiar local needs. 



I seriously doubt whether we know yet 

 what is the best process of orchard tillage. 

 The orchards have been unsatisfactory in 

 their development and we changed the 

 plan. During the process of change an 

 improvement was noticed. This improve- 

 ment, however, in all probability, could 

 not be fully attributed to the change in 

 methods of soil m.magement. The time 

 we were bringing the orchards into clean 

 tillage was the period in which pruning was 

 the most broadly advocated and generally 

 practiced. During this time, the processes 

 of spraying were greatly improved, and 

 orchard heating was put into practice to a 

 greater extent than ever before. 



With the development of orchards far 

 past what our fathers expected, we are 

 again becoming discontent and swing 

 quickly from one extreme to another. I 



am convinced that everv district that has a 

 distinct climate of its own, will have also 

 its own cultivation and crop management 

 problems. 



Most of the country west of the Cascades 

 h.is an abundant rainfall and during part 

 of the year even an excess of rainfall. 

 Some local districts, however, suffer very 

 distinct droughts in mid-summer and could 

 probably be benefited greatly by local in- 

 stallation of irrigation projects. 



There is the advantage of not having 

 extremely cold winters. This gives op- 

 portunity for the development of certain 

 types of crops and their growth through a 

 winter period and the development of a 

 type of vegetation that can be used to a 

 very good advantage in maintaining soil 

 fertility. 



"PLANT Food Elements — The plant 

 -*- food materials in the soil that are most 

 commonly considered in fertilizer work 

 are: nitrogen, phosphoric acid and pot.ash. 

 In the soils of irrigated districts nitrogen is 

 most commonly the element forming the 

 limiting factor of plant growth. In 

 Western Washington and Oregon the heavy 

 rainfall of many of the districts causes 

 nitrogen also to be a limiting factor in 

 clean tilled land. This is not so definitely 

 a limiting factor in our forested lands or 

 in the lands heavily covered with a growth 

 of vegetation that is constantly adding de- 

 caying material to the soil. 



Nitrogen exists in the soil with a com- 

 bination in the plant tissue or in water- 

 soluble forms. The heavy rainfall then 

 would tend rapidly to carry away all of the 

 nitrogen materials that are not tied up in 

 plant tissue. This is fundamentally the 

 reason why bringing land that h.as been 

 producing tremendously heavy growth of 

 trees, under cultivation, has soon brought in- 

 dications of its being exhausted. In Clarke 

 County Washington, some of the soil that 

 has been under cultivation for 25 to 50 

 years has been found definitely depleted in 

 its nitrogen content. This, of course, has 

 resulted from the fact that the types of ag- 

 ricultural practices on the land had not 



