APPLES 



93 



many mountain orchards the stony soils 

 produce the best trees. Loose stones may 

 be placed to form shelf terraces between 

 each two rows of trees. Unless the soil 

 is very thin, stones may be considered as 

 a benefit rather than otherwise, because 

 of the value they have to the land in 

 assisting drainage and in protecting soil 

 moisture. It is noticeable that fruit trees 

 near rock piles or stone fences suffer 

 little from drought. 



Clay Land 



Apple trees will grow on a great va- 

 riety of soils, but they feel most at home 

 and give their best results on deep, rich 

 clays and loams. Why they prefer these 

 soils it is impossible to say, but apple 

 trees seem to be suited to clays just as 

 cacti are to desert sands. The early or 

 summer apples do well on light or sandy 

 soils because they ripen their crop before 

 the hot season, when moisture is scarc- 

 est. Late fall or winter varieties, which 

 have to develop their fruit in the hot 

 summer, when moisture is hardest to 

 get, must have a soil that is retentive 

 of moisture. Muck soils are rich and 

 contain abundant moisture, but they pro- 

 duce large, rank-growing trees with ten- 

 der terminals that produce poor fruit. 



Kich Soil 



Apple soils should be rich and they 

 should not be called upon to produce any- 

 thing but apples. It takes a great deal 

 of fertility in the land to produce the 

 wood of the trees on an acre of orchard. 

 The fertility that produces the fruit Is 

 over and above that required to grow the 

 trees. There are few crops so exhaustive 

 on land as a crop of nursery stock, and 

 no tillers of the soil know so well how to 

 fertilize the soil as do nurserymen. If 

 trees continued to grow in the orchard 

 with the vigor they are made to do in 

 the nursery there would be a thousand- 

 fold greater returns from the orchard 

 than there are today. From my experi- 

 ence and observation in horticulture, I 

 think it safe to say that 75 per cent of 

 all the trees that leave nurseries die of 

 starvation before they come to usefulness. 

 Soil poverty destroys more trees than 

 all the pests and plagues put to- 



gether. A soil cropped to death with 

 corn or cotton or tramped hard by the 

 feet of stock is a certain burying ground 

 for the tender and well-favored tree from 

 the fertile soil of a nursery. The reason 

 timber trees grow so well in their native 

 forests is that the fertile, spongy mould 

 of the forest floor affords an ideal home 

 for the little seedlings till they get big 

 enough to fend for themselves. Soil for 

 orchards should be as nearly as possible 

 like nature's model forest soil. Indeed, 

 the best soils for fruit trees are those 

 just vacated by the forest primeval and 

 occupied by the orchard before they can 

 be pre-empted by any other agricultural 

 tenant. Mountain coves are ideal for 

 orchards. 



W. N. HUTT, 

 Raleigh, N. C. 



New York Soils 



The apple will grow in a variety of 

 soils. Even on a poor soil it will struggle 

 to maintain its life and to reproduce 

 through its fruit, as reproduction is the 

 real object of all life, animal and vege- 

 table. There are, however, certain kinds 

 of soils that are much better adapted to 

 the development of apple trees than oth- 

 ers. A soil that contains a certain amount 

 of clay in its composition is excellent. 

 Trees will grow in a stiff clay, but such 

 soil is often over-saturated with water 

 and trees will not do their best with 

 too much water about their roots. Air, 

 which is necessary for the roots of trees 

 and for all plants, is frequently shut out 

 by the water in clay soil. Such soil 

 snould be well underdrained before trees 

 are planted in it. 



Clay and Sand 



A soil that is made up of a mixture 

 of clay and sand, and is known as a clay 

 loam, is excellent for apple trees. 



Trees will grow in a sandy soil, but 

 they will not grow so large, neither will 

 they produce so much fruit. The trees 

 and the fruit on sandy soil are more 

 subject to insect attack, for insects 

 thrive better in a dry soil than in one 

 that holds water for a long time. 



There are, however, variations in 

 sandy soils that produce not only good 



