38 STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



one of these constituents may be required in any orchard. What 

 is lacking in the soil must be found out by your own experiment- 

 ing. 



But one thing you cannot expect, to follow the directions I am 

 giving, plowing and harrowing and adding only the commercial 

 fertilizers, the minerals as you buy them in the phosphates, and 

 in this way to keep your ground in good mechanical condition. 

 There is lacking in the soil the humus. Something must be 

 added to keep this soil loose and light. This can be done with 

 cover crops. Nature abhors a bare surface. She is always 

 planting something on a naked soil, and it is much better to raise 

 weeds than it is to keep that soil bare the year round. There- 

 fore, cultivate the first of the season, keep the ground thoroughly 

 mulched with a light dust soil until August or the first of Sep- 

 tember, then plant some crop that shall leave the fibres through 

 the soil and keep the soil loose and light. In this way you retain 

 the moisture in the soil which is one of the great advantages of 

 keeping your soil loose and light. That is one of the methods of 

 holding the moisture in the soil. The heavy, compact, dense soil 

 dries out very quickly, and the apple tree requires, especially 

 when growing a crop of apples, requires an immense amount of 

 water for a large crop. Therefore never plant a crop in the 

 spring that shall take all through the months of June and July 

 moisture from the soil very much faster than the bare surface 

 itself, but keep it plowed loose and cultivated lightly through the 

 first of the season, keeping the ground full of humus, full of 

 fibres to hold the soil loose and light, to prevent the evaporation 

 of the water, to conserve the moisture through the summer ; then 

 when it comes early fall, plant rye. wheat, peas or something of 

 that kind to cover the ground through the fall and winter, and 

 all the little fibrous roots decaying in the soil will keep up the 

 supply of humus and keep it loose and light for the next season 

 \o conserve the moisture through the coming year. 



One of the best fertilizers for the orchard for this reason, to 

 supply the lack of humus that is in nearly all fertilizers, is stable 

 manure. But in the larger part of stable manure we get more 

 nitrogen than the trees need, therefore making it a very expen- 

 sive manure, unless we put a very small amount of the stable 

 manure and supplement it with potash and phosphoric acid in 

 mineral form, — ground bone and muriate of potash. Therefore 



