STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. II9 



Mr. Morse : We have tried vetch, clover and rye. 



Prof. Hedrick : The humus I am sure the tree has to have. 



Mr. Morse : That is the point and I wish you could tell me 

 how to get it. 



Mr. Keyser: Mr. Chairman, Mr. Conant as a member of the 

 Station Council will find on his first visit to the state farm a 

 block of twenty trees that have received the cultivation, the 

 cover crop, the same as the adjoining blocks, minus the fertiliza- 

 tion ; for three years they have had no fertilization whatever. 

 And the crop yield from those twenty trees has averaged up to 

 the balance of the orchard. That confirms Prof. Hedrick's 

 experiment that they are carrying on at Geneva, only in a much 

 lesser way. This is the third year. At our meeting at Lewiston, 

 two years ago, you will remember Mr. Woodworth stated that 

 in the Annapolis Valley they had been doing fall plowing for 

 twenty-five to thirty years, late in the fall, just before the 

 ground froze, and that they had never had any bad effects from 

 it. Consecjuently, two years ago, we took a block of trees at 

 the state farm, and they are receiving now the second plowing; 

 they have been through their first winter. 



Prof. Hedrick : Will you let me say in that connection 

 that every acre of our two or three hundred acres in 

 New York is now plowed in the fall and we wouldn't go back 

 to spring plowing for anything. And ours is a heavy clay soil. 

 We find the weather in the winter — freezing and thawing — has 

 something to do with freeing the food elements in the soil. We 

 plow our peaches and berries. The land is in better tilth the next 

 summer because of the fall plowing. 



Question : What time do you plow ? 



Prof. Hedrick : We begin about the middle of October and 

 keep at it till it is all done. Just as soon as the crops are ofif we 

 begin to plow. * 



Dr. Twitchell: Touching the use of application of nitrate 

 of soda: I made an application of half a pound to see what 

 the effect would be upon a couple of trees, half a pound in six- 

 teen quarts of water, and sprinkled it out, just outside of the 

 drip of the trees, and I do not remember of any one coming 

 there during the summer — that is when the leaves were about 

 three-quarters grown — and looking over those trees but that 

 called my attention to these trees and the size of the leaves and 



