148 An American Fruit-Farm 



There is difference of opinion as to the best 

 cultivation of orchards: Shall they be kept in 

 grass? Plowed, dragged, cultivated, sown to 

 cover-crops, and treated like the vineyard? This 

 means: Can the tree feed, grow, bear fruit of as 

 good quality and of the same quantity in sod as in 

 cultivated ground? My own experience favors 

 cultivation. Feed the cherry tree and it will feed 

 you. Now any tree can feed in sod groimd, but 

 can it get enough food to produce what we want it 

 to produce? A tree in sod is not unlike one in the 

 wild. By stirring the surface of the land you drain 

 it, ventilate it, open up the pores, and accelerate 

 the circulation of soluble plant-foods in the soil. 

 Moreover, you by cultivation destroy innumerable 

 enemies of the tree, as grubs, worms, even toxics 

 in the soil which otherwise would feed on the tree 

 to its injury. A hayiield is apparently a clean 

 place, but a hayfield is a hayfield, not an orchard. 

 Much of the virtue of fertilizers scattered over a 

 hayfield vanishes, in air, into thin air. Plow your 

 hayfield and the fertilizers get into the laboratory 

 of the soil and are transformed into plant-food. A 

 tree in a meadow gets *' root-bound.*' Yet, let us 

 not forget, we have set a standard, an artificial 

 standard, for the fruit-tree. Not merely apples, 

 pears, cherries, plums, but finest apples, pears, 

 plums, and cherries, all pulp, and, if possible, seed- 

 less or, at least, seeds little. Nature has her eyes on 

 the apple seed; we have ours on the apple pulp. 

 An apple tree in sod will grow apples; one in culti- 



