15 



DJcely. made a good growth, were handsome, but very few 

 of the trees fruited, and they were two year old trees at the 

 time of setting, and I might say that 90 if not 9o% of the 

 orchards in the contest were set out as two year old trees. 

 The third orchard in this farm, only a few rods from the 

 two mider cultivation, was set out in yearling trees, or what 

 we sometimes term whips, and under the sod mulch system. 

 They were nicely set out and the mulch placed immediately 

 around the young trees. 



This man had made a study of fertilizers and their ef- 

 fects, and had fed those trees quite heavily with available 

 plant food, mixing up his chemicals, as I remember it. him- 

 self. Now he had forced those trees ; he had lived up to his 

 system, he had mulched those trees annually until he had 

 rotted the sod all up and it was very nice under this mulch. 



At the fourth and fifth season he had reduced his ferti- 

 lizer and alloAved those trees to sort of check back a little. 

 They had made an early growth but checked back. Some 

 liow" they were not quite as large, taken as a whole, as the 

 trees under cultivation, but set out under this system in the 

 sod, getting the benefit of this drying out, it seemd to me 

 that had served as a check on those young trees, set out as 

 whips, to cause them to set fruit spurs and fruit buds at the 

 fourth year, and they were laden with quite a crop of fruit 

 m August, at the close of the fifth year's growth — those 

 joung trees. In fact, out of the 72 orchards judged, I 

 think there were a larger percentage of fruiting of these 

 voung trees set out as whips and carried on under this sys- 

 tem than in any other orchard in the contest. 



After watching the behavior of trees under this system 

 and that system, and this method and that, I have come to 

 the conclusion that it is a very important thing, under our 

 conditions, that the moisture content in the soil goes down 

 to a certain point, but not so low as to interfere Avith the 

 maturing of the fruit; but too much moisture works an in- 



