Sod vs. Tillage 69 



still standing on the old farms. The apple orchard, there- 

 fore, on the one hand, and the well-tilled vineyard on the 

 other, are the object-lessons illustrating the faults of non- 

 tillage and the gains of good tillage. The apple country is 

 no longer coextensive with the sod country, and new 

 methods must prevail. 



Sod orchards. 



It is not to be inferred from the foregoing remarks that 

 orchards in sod are necessarily failures, or even that they 

 must be unsatisfactory. There are notable examples to 

 the contrary; but they are special cases, and the success 

 is probably in spite of the sod rather than because of it. 

 They are cases in which the land is specially good or 

 retentive of moisture, in which the other care is painstak- 

 ing, and mostly in which the grass is not mown for hay. 

 In some cases, the grass is cut and spread under the trees; 

 this is the so-called "sod-mulch" method. It probably 

 will be found that most very successful sod orchards are 

 in regions of heavy rainfall or of light evaporation, or 

 that there are local underground supplies of moisture. 



Tests on apples by the New York (Geneva) Experi- 

 ment Station show in favor of tillage over sod in yield, 

 larger fruit, longer -keeping fruit, better quality, 

 uniformity of trees and crops, greater growth of trees, 

 better foliage, less dead wood in the tree-tops, deeper 

 rooting, a better supply in the soil of humus and nitrogen. 

 The fruit in the sod-mulched plat was much more highly 

 colored than in the tilled plat and matured one to three 

 weeks earlier. At the end of a ten-year test, Hedrick 

 concludes as follows: 



"Grass militates against apples growing in sod in 

 several ways which act together, as: (1) Lowering the 



