THE SOIL 75 



put around your trees, the next best thing is to 

 depend upon the land on which the orchard is 

 planted to produce its own mulching material. 

 In other words fertilize the grass so that you 

 get a good growth. ' ' 



The cultivated block in this experiment 

 showed that the trees made forty-three per 

 cent, more growth and produced eleven times 

 more fruit than did the trees that were in sod. 



Commenting on this condition, Professor 

 Laurenz Greene, now head of the Horticultural 

 Department at Purdue, said: ''Had it been pos- 

 sible without completely upsetting the plan of 

 the experiment to adequately fertilize the cover 

 crop in the cultivated plot, and if proper fer- 

 tilizer had been applied to the sod plots in 

 order to produce a greater growth of mulching 

 materials the wide variations found between 

 the sod plot and the cultivated plot would have 

 been materially reduced. 



"It should, however, be emphasized that no 

 one experiment on a single type of soil can give 

 conclusive evidence as to the best methods of 

 orchard soil management that might apply to 

 orchards on a totally different soil type and in 

 a different region. 



"These experiments do indicate, what we 

 have long felt to be true, that moisture is one 

 of the most important limiting factors in or- 

 chard soil management." 



