88 ORCHARD CULTURE 



and even necessary. It must be remembered that the longer the 

 sowing of the cover crop is delayed the less growth there will 

 be of that crop, and consequently the less humus there will be to 

 plow under the following year, which in turn will make the land 

 suffer more from drouth. In other w^ords, by prolonging cultiva- 

 tion we save moisture for that year at the expense of future 

 years. 



Hand Work. — While thorough cultivation in the orchard as 

 a whole is desirable, it is doubtful how important it is, in older 

 orchards at least, that the soil close about the trees should be 

 stirred. And certainly it adds very greatly to the expense if one 

 tries to remove all the weeds and grass from close around every 

 tree. It means hand labor and a good deal of it, and as soon 

 as we resort to hand work we raise very decidedly the cost of 

 caring for the orchard. If, for any reason, it is thought to be 

 absolutely necessary to do this work, however, then as much as 

 possible should be done with the grape-hoe shown in Figure 43. 

 It is surprising how much this implement will do. The balance 

 may be cleared out by using a lieavj" hoe or a light mattock or 

 grub hoe. 



Damage During Cultivation. — One of the annoying things 

 about cultivating an orchard is the amount of injury that is 

 pretty certain to be done to the trees by the harness and the 

 whiffletrees and the cultivators. Even with the best of men and 

 teams a certain amount of this damage is sure to occur. With 

 poorer men and less steady teams there is enough of it to 

 drive the most ardent believer in cultivation to sod culture. 

 Patches of bark will be scraped off the trunk by the cultivator, 

 the tips of branches chewed off by the horses, or the bark raked 

 off the branches by the hames of the harness. While one is always 

 more or less at the mercy of the teamster, a good many things 

 may be done to help him to avoid injuring the trees. The horses 

 may be muzzled, and harnesses with low hames ought always to 

 be used. We may even resort Avith great satisfaction to the 

 tugless harness shown in Figure 40. Then short whiffletrees and 

 doubletrees ought always to be used. It will avoid many a scar 

 if the outside ends of the whiffletrees are padded with burlap 



