62 FRUIT-GROWING 



ago orcharding was a business marked more by 

 what men thought than by what they knew. 

 Certain things were supposed to be true, but 

 few things were known to be. While we can 

 not claim that we know everything about fruit- 

 growing to-day, still, we feel that some progress 

 has been made. To-morrow, of course, out lit- 

 tle airplanes may develop wing trouble and our 

 gas motors may refuse to run, but taken as a 

 whole the apple business begins to look like a 

 really civilized branch of the farming industry. 

 With the exception of the progress made in 

 spraying nothing has contributed more to or- 

 chard progress than has our increased knowl- 

 edge of the best methods of handling the soil. 

 While these methods are still the basis of argu- 

 ment it can not be denied that we know a great 

 deal more about the soil requirements of fruit 

 trees now than we ever did before. One of the 

 first things that we learned was that an apple 

 orchard must be well drained. I have indicated 

 in a previous chapter that the location for the 

 orchard should be on land providing good nat- 

 ural drainage. Personally I would always pre- 

 fer such a location, but in some cases it is not 

 possible to secure such a "lay of the land." 

 Where the surface is at all flat the grower must 

 resort to tile drainage to remove the excess 

 moisture. Lacking tile drainage, some grow- 

 ers have made a fair success by plowing their 



