STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 59 



winter sorts. But being obliged to bring in a picking gang of 

 thirty to fifty men, I want to give them enough work so as to 

 make it an object for them to come to me every year. That is 

 why I have planted along with my winter apples some late 

 fall and early winter sorts, such as the Grimes Golden and the 

 Mother, which can be picked ten or fifteen days before the 

 winter sorts are ready to come off, and will extend my picking 

 season that much. This counts a great deal when we come to 

 the labor problem. 



Planting with Dynamite. Perhaps some of you have tried the 

 much advertised method of dynamiting in planting the trees. 

 Our conclusions in Virginia have been cjuite unanimous that it 

 is not expedient or profitable, except on land which has very 

 stiff subsoil or a shale close to the surface, and such lands 

 should not be put in orchard, anyhow. We have listened to a 

 great deal of claptrap about dynamiting apple lands. We have 

 been even advised to dynamite mature, bearing orchards, to set 

 off little blasts of dynamite every forty feet to loosen up the 

 land. This seems to me the most senseless thing that could be 

 recommended. Experiments in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, 

 and in Virginia, have shown that on land properly fitted for 

 apple trees the ordinary digging of a good hole gives just as 

 satisfactory results as dynamiting. If dynamiting at all, it 

 should always be done in the fall so that the loosened soil may 

 fall back into place to some extent before the trees are set in 

 the spring, otherwise the trees may suffer from a spring drought. 



Tillage Problems. I showed you last night pictures illustrat- 

 ing soil management in the mature orchard. I tried to bring 

 out the fact that there are occasions when clean tillage of the 

 bearing orchard may not be as desirable as keeping it in sod 

 part of the time. My bearing orchard is tilled one year in 

 three. The orchard is plowed or worked with a cut-away har- 

 row in February, and is cultivated three or four times, perhaps 

 until the first of July ; then it is seeded to cow peas or soy beans, 

 which make a nice growth before frost. Early the next spring 

 that land is disked and is seeded to red clover in March or 

 April. I have never found any green manuring crop, not except- 

 ing crimson clover or hairy vetch, which equals old fashioned 

 clover in soil improving value and general adaptability for the 

 bearing apple orchard. It is clipped two or three times during 



