CULTIVATION. 4! 



turist of long and wide experience, writing of their present 

 unproductive apple orchards, says : 



" In my earliest recollection, little thought was given to the cul- 

 ture of the orchard for the orchard's sake. So long as profitable 

 crops could be grown among the trees, the orchard was cultivated. 

 When cropping ceased to be profitable, cultivation ceased, or if any 

 was done, it was done by the snouts of swine. And yet I can hardly 

 recall a season, during the first twenty-five years of my life, that 

 apples were not abundant. Some seasons, certain favorite varieties, 

 like Early Harvest, Sweet Bough, Fall Pippin, etc., bore heavier 

 crops than in others, but they were rarely entirely barren. 



"The older members of the Western New York Horticultural 

 Society will remember how often this subject came up before the 

 society from twenty to twenty-five years ago. Patrick Barry, John 

 J. Thomas, Elisha Moody, J. S. Woodward, S. D. Willard, and many 

 other gentlemen, eminently successful fruit-growers, urged the im- 

 portance of thorough cultivation and, after the trees should become 

 so large as to require all the ground, making the growing of annual 

 crops unprofitable and inconvenient, they would continue culture for 

 the benefit of trees and fruit. On the other hand, Dr. E. Ware 

 Sylvester, Henry E. Hooker, Godfrey Zimmerman, James A. Root, 

 and a few others, insisted that after apple trees have reached bear- 

 ing age, as much, or more, fruit could be produced by seeding down 

 to grass as by cultivation, provided no grass was removed from the 

 orchard, but was mowed and left upon the ground as mulch, or pas- 

 tured by hogs or sheep. The mooted question was never definitely 

 settled by the society, but comes up frequently of late years. Both 

 parties have been able to instance many proofs of their side of the 

 controversy. From many years of observation among orchardists, 

 and from my own experience, I have come to the conclusion that 

 fruitfulness depends more upon several other conditions than upon 

 cultivation, after the trees have arrived at bearing age. 



"Now, I would lend all possible encouragement for the feeding- 

 roots of apple trees to ramify and forage freely in this surface soil, 

 near enough the surface to be benefited by the heat of the sun and 

 the vivifying effects of the atmosphere and its fructifying gases. I 

 would be very careful not to drive those roots to the cold, inert, 

 sterile subsoil, beyond the reach of the benign influences of that 

 atmosphere of heat and gases that permeates the surface soil, where 

 myriads of living organisms, in the humus, carry on the work of 

 nitrification. Subsequent cultivation would be carried on with the 

 purpose of avoiding the disturbance of the roots in their best feeding 

 ground, and keeping the soil pulverized and mellow beyond the roots, 

 for their future occupancy. I would leave, every year, a considerable 

 space around every tree beyond that covered by the branches, to be 

 filled by the season's growth of the roots, upon which I would plant 

 nothing, for it is very poor policy to place the roots of annuals in 

 competition with the roots of the trees for the plant-food and moist- 

 ure of the soil. Hence, every year, the space around the trees, 

 upon which no annual would be planted, would broaden until but 



