METHODS OF MULCHING 325 



METHODS OF MULCHING AND THEIR 

 COMPARATIVELY VALUE. 



J. S. HARRIS, LA CRESCENT. 



Mulching- of orchard trees is recommended by a number of our 

 most successful horticulturists and more or less practiced by many 

 of them. Some practice it to save cultivation and others for speci- 

 fic purposes. In the latter case if properly done it is in all cases 

 more or less beneficial, but as a substitute for cultivation it is often 

 of doubtful utility and sometimes positively injurious. Besides, to 

 save cultivation it is variously practiced to conserve moisture, to 

 keep out frost and heat and prevent injury from them, and to keep 

 fruit clean and free from grit. The operation is nothing more than 

 covering the ground about the stems of trees and plants and between 

 the rows with coarse straw or barnyard litter, marsh hay, the bot- 

 toms of straw stacks or some other material that will not take up 

 moisture from the soil, but will prevent evaporation, thus keeping 

 the soil beneath from drying out rapidly and maintaining it -in that 

 moist and equable condition of temperature that is most favorable 

 for the growth of young roots of trees and plants. In the orchard 

 it is an excellent practice with newly transplanted trees and especial- 

 ly for such as are set rather late in the spring. Very many trees in 

 a dry season fail at mid-summer after having had a fair start. 

 From the dry and parched condition of the earth about the roots, sur- 

 face watering fails to save them, while if they had been properly 

 mulched at the time of planting, when the soil was charged with 

 ample moisture, or, in a case of drouth at time of planting, well wat- 

 ered in the holes, an inch or two of dry, loose soil on the surface 

 and a light covering of litter on top would have carried them 

 through a dry, hot spell with comparative safety. If no other ma- 

 terial is at hand, two inches of sand from the road side will answer 

 a very good purpose. 



Watering upon the surface after the ground has become hard 

 and dry is most generally an injurious practice unless immediately 

 covered with a mulch, but mulching will do but little if any good 

 applied over a hard, dried out soil, and I do not believe that a 

 heavy mulching is at any time desirable in the summer months, be- 

 cause light rains are all absorbed by it, and it prevents the dampen- 

 ing of the soil below, and many times this is the case through the 

 entire summer. It is also dangerous to use any kind of mulch 

 through which water would not penetrate quickly or that would 

 carry water away from the trees. Where the land is nearly level 

 the best of all mulches is a mellow surface soil of the depth of two 



