HOW TO GROW AND MARKET FRUIT 



the trees are large. See further information about dynamite 

 on pages 34 and 37. 



A mulch of some kind (dust, dead grass, weeds, etc.) is 

 needed to insulate the moisture from the air. In all sections 

 where the raintall between March to August does not exceed 

 from sixteen to eighteen inches, tillage and cover crops are 

 test adapted to retain moisture. The land should be plowed 

 in April or May, turning under the cover crop, then gone over 

 immediately with a Cutaway, spring-tooth or Acme harrow, 

 and then harrowed with spike-tooth every eight or ten days 

 until in July. The new cover crop should be sown in July, 

 partly to use the remaining moisture. The trees do not need 

 water after that time. They should begin then to ripen wood 

 and fruit. 



Only two or three harrowings with the spring-tooth are 

 needed. The teeth should go about three inches deep, and a 

 leveler-drag should be attached to the harrow. For the remain- 

 ing times use a spike-tooth harrow. A roller should be used 

 but little, except on very light soil, and should be followed 

 at once by a smoothing harrow. A day or so after every rain, 

 harrow to break the crust, even if you had finished just before 

 the rain. Never allow a baked crust to form, for it will quickly 

 suck the water out of the soil beneath. 



The whole idea, so far as moisture is concerned, is to keep 

 a layer of dust-dry, powdered soil two to three inches deep on 

 the surface all the time. As it is not handy to dig around each 

 tree every time you harrow, and impossible to harrow with 

 any satisfaction closer to a tree than a foot or eighteen inches, 

 a heavy mulch of leaves, straw or dead grass should be placed 

 around each tree. Young trees especially need this, since 

 they have small root systems, and the soil right where they 

 stand dries out quickly. This mulch is a great labor-saver, 

 and does the work well. 



In sections where the rainfall from March to August is as 

 much as twenty inches, the sod mulch system is, without doubt, 

 the best way of taking care of the moisture problem in an 

 orchard. The essence of this system is to grow between the 

 trees enough grass to nearly supply the trees with plant food 

 when it decays. A little commercial fertilizer is added. No 

 part of the grass is taken away. It is mowed two or three 

 times a season and most of the cutting raked up and piled 

 under the trees. Sometimes this mulch is eighteen inches deep 

 under the trees and for a few feet outside in a circle, although 

 over the rest of the ground an inch or two is all that should 

 be left. The ground under it always is moist. Each season's 

 growth is worked into the surface of the soil by frost and water 

 (or by a cutaway harrow) thus providing another moisture 

 holder. It is in connection with a complete sod mulch system 

 that dynamite is most valuable, in ways any grower can see, 

 for the ground never is plowed or torn up. 



At least six inches of water are needed to grow this ^heavy 

 crop of erass, hence no less than eighteen inches of rain will 

 be enough for a mulch sod system. If the grass contains much 



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