92 The Principles of Fruit-growing 



so that the same tillage and treatment may be applied 

 to the entire area. All hard and "sour" spots should 

 receive particular care in drainage and subjugation, or 

 they should be left outside the plantation. 



Lands with hard and impervious subsoils should be 

 plowed very deep before trees are put on them; and in 

 some cases, as for dwarf pears, it may pay well to use the 

 subsoil plow. It should be borne in mind, however, that 

 the subsoil plow is not always a fundamental corrective of 

 hard subsoils, for it does not remove the cause. The sub- 

 soil may gradually settle back into its old condition, and 

 land cannot be completely subsoiled after it is planted to 

 trees. In the case of strawberries, raspberries, and other 

 short-rotation fruits, the subsoil plow may be used at 

 frequent intervals; but in lands to be planted to orchards, 

 the tile drain is a more perfect ameliorator of the subsoil 

 than is the subsoil plow. Yet even the one subsoiling may 

 serve a useful purpose in sending the roots downward at 

 the start, and this advantage will be the greater when 

 the superfluous water removes itself rapidly from the 

 hardpan. Good tile underdraining may modify the hard- 

 pan. 



The land should always be in a thorough state of 

 tillage at the time the trees are planted; that is, 

 whether in sod or in hoed crops, the land should be in 

 good "heart" and physical condition, fertile, and free 

 from both very hard and very wet places and pernicious 

 weeds. There are exceptions to this in the case of certain 

 rocky or steep lands on which it is desired to set apples; 

 but for all orchards planted directly for commercial results, 

 this advice has few, if any, modifications. It is usually 

 best to put the land into tilled crops the season before the 

 trees are set, as potatoes or corn; although sod land, if 



