CHAPTER VI 



ORCHARD CULTURE 



Three Methods. Having set out the orchard the next ques- 

 tion to be decided is what type of culture it is to receive. On 

 this point orchard men are divided into three camps : First, there 

 are a few men like Mr. Grant Hitchings, of New York, and Mr. 

 A. A. Marshall, of Fitchburg, Massachusetts, who practise what 

 may be called " sod culture," that is all the grass grown in the 

 orchard is simply cut and allowed to lie on the land as a mulch. 

 Of course this mulch becomes thicker year by year, forming a 

 better and better protection against the loss of moisture by 

 evaporation and as it decays adding humus to the soil. 



Second, there are the men who practise clean cultivation of 

 the soil. By far the greatest number of really successful orchard- 

 ists belong to this class. There are endless variations in the 

 method as practised by different men, but the main features 

 would be plowing the orchard in the spring, clean cultivation 

 up to mid-summer, and then seeding down to a cover crop. 



Lastly, there is a very large class who have their orchards 

 in sod but who can not, by any stretch of the imagination, be said 

 to practise sod culture. They simply have their orchards in 

 hayfields. Perhaps it is only fair to add that there are a few 

 men who have their orchards on relatively heavy land and who 

 practise generous fertilizing who are quite successful in raising 

 both hay and apples on the same land. But their conditions and 

 their characters are so exceptional that it is dangerous to even 

 mention them. 



Methods Vary with Conditions. There is no question what- 

 ever that the type of culture which it is best to adopt varies 

 with conditions. Under most conditions cultivation will most 

 emphatically give the best results (Fig. 34). And yet there are 

 enough orchards where sod culture is practised to show that it 

 can be made successful. And there are many cases where cultiva- 



77 



