WHAT CAN BE PROFITABLY GROWN IN THE ORCHARD. 3813 
Mr. Latham: I am impressed with the importance of cultivating an 
orchard. Probably I have had opportunity to read the reports of other so- 
cieties, the reports of this society and the reports of experiment stations 
more than any one else in te society, and I have read each paper that is 
presented before this society at least three times in the work of getting it 
ready for the press, and I am impressed with the thought that the success 
that has come to us has been largely in connection with good cultivation. 
Those that have cultivated have obtained good results. I want to ask Mr. 
Underwood for his further experience in the orchard that he put under cul- 
tivation three or four years ago. 
Mr. Underwood: I speak of my own experience, and not altogether that 
either, but I speak from my own experience and that which I have incorpo- 
rated in my own from the experience of others. Our president here is the 
first man who put good sense into me about apple growing. He told me 
of what he had seen and knew of thorough cultivation. I had been working 
along other lines, but I just made up my mind I would do what I wanted 
tc do, and that is tu cultivate thoroughly, and I presume I am doing it more 
thoroughly than any one else. I like to go into the orchard and say there 
is not a weed in it. You cannot do that all the time, but there are times in 
our orchard when you can almost say there is not a weed in it. The idea is 
to get the moisture in the soil and keep it there. I think in this climate our 
failure or success depends upon our having enough moisture in the soil. It 
is so dry here. Where we are the soil is dry, and a good deal of the subsoil 
is rather dry; in one orchard that we have the soil is sandy, there is a little 
mixture of clay in it, and some of it is gravel, but it is a poor place for an 
orchard. 
Mr. Dartt: How deep is the gravel? 
Mr. Underwood: When they dig wells they have to go down a hundred 
feet for water, and it is sand clear down to the water, except there may be a 
little admixture of.clay in strata. It is not pure sand, still it is what we call 
sandy land. I tried mulching and I tried other methods, but, as I said before, 
when the president told me they could get along without irrigation in the 
Great Bend of the Columbia river and talked about a dust blanket I sup- 
posed it meant something like three inches of dust such as we find on the 
road in summer; but it:meant simply to stir up the top surface of the soil to 
prevent evaporation of the moisture and prevent it going off by capillary 
movement. So now when it has rained, and the ground has dried off with a 
fine sun and a good deal of wind, just as soon as the ground is in a condi- 
tion to stir, the team goes in there with a spring tooth harrow, we harrow it 
over and keep that surface loose, an inch or two inches, just a little on the 
surface. We have another orchard that is growing on better soil where the 
sun is so hot in August that sometimes it will bake the apples on the ground, 
and I call that a pretty hot place for an orchard. Under those conditions 
we are trying to grow fruit, and I have not found anything that answers our 
purpose so well as thorough cultivation, 
Mr. Sherman, (Iowa): Do you keep that cultivation up all summer? 
Mr. Underwood: We keep it up all summer and until snow flies. We 
did not go into winter quarters this year with dry soil, and last year we hada 
good lot of rain anyway, but two years ago it was dry in the fall, and I hesi- 
tated about cultivating in October, but I said I had started out on that line 
whether I killed or not, and I kept up cultivation up to freezing weather— 
