STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. I3I 



Prof. Stewart : Well, that is a heavy soil. It is exactly the 

 same soil type that I was showing you in our young orchards, 

 but it is in quite a different part of the state. That soil type 

 in the southern part of the state seems to show quite an advan- 

 tage for tillage. It is a heavy soil and on trees of this age till- 

 age has been better uniformly in that heavy soil in the southern 

 part of the state but in the same soil type at the College the 

 mulch has been better for young trees. 



Ques. What is the effect on the color of your fruit in these 

 different methods? 



Prof. Stewart : We always get our best color on sod, our 

 next best on the mulch, perhaps third on tillage and cover crops 

 and fourth, frecjuently on tillage alone. 



Ques. Do you consider it would be safe to discontinue that 

 mulch system that you have been running five years? 



Prof. Stewart: Why, if I needed to discontinue it I certainly 

 would do it, and the way I would discontinue it would be to go 

 in there with a double-action disc or cutaway harrow, and I 

 would simply cut things up at any time I cared to. I feel per- 

 fectly free to go in with a disc or cutaway harrow and tear up 

 the soil, sod, or anything, no matter how long the mulch has 

 been running. There is quite an erroneous impression about 

 the relation of cultural methods to the position of roots of apple 

 trees. As a matter of fact you cannot change the position of 

 apple roots in the soil to any great extent by cultural methods. 

 Apple roots have a certain zone that they are adapted to follow 

 in a soil, and they do not go down nearly so deep under any 

 system as many people think. We studied the depth of apple 

 roots on eight or nine different soil types and quite a good many 

 trees, and we found that in all cases by far the majority of the 

 feeding roots were in the surface 12 inches of soil, regardless 

 of the cultural method, regardless of the soil type and regardless 

 of the tree variety. In the case of the mulch system that entire 

 12 inches is completely filled with roots. In the case of the 

 tillage system, it is only the lower eight or perhaps the lower six 

 of that 12 inches that are entirely fiilled with roots, and in the 

 upper four to six inches the roots are annually cut out. Now 

 of course, if a person goes into an orchard after it has been 

 running for a certain time without tillage he will have to do a 



