202 The Connecticut Pomological Society 



planted so you can go two ways with the plow and harrow. 

 Otherwise it will be expensive work, for there will be strips of 

 ground that can only be partially reached, and that will grow 

 up with weeds and grass, and your ground will get hard and 

 your trees will be affected right at the time when they need 

 the moisture that is in the ground. As has been said, we have 

 had two seasons that were very dry, — 1899 and 1900, — and we 

 have found out that trees bearing a lot of fruit, very likely not 

 getting proper moisture in a light soil, on the top the leaves 

 begin to fall, and the trees suffer in that way through want of 

 water. The fruit suffers more than the trees do. Now 1 sup- 

 pose we all use the plow and harrow, and in some places that 

 is about all we do use. If the ground has not been kept free 

 from grass, a plow would have to be used in the orchard, espe- 

 cially with peaches and apples. The ground should be plowed 

 as near as vou can reach to the trees. Then, following that, 

 there are various ways of scratching that strip which is left. 

 We used to, in one orchard, take a common cultivator and a 

 single horse and stir up that strip with a man holding the culti- 

 vator and another man leading the horse. Going through, 

 perhaps once on each side, and then going ' cris-cross,' letter 

 'S ' fashion, going through one way, in one direction, and com- 

 ing back on the other side of the tree. To do that it needs a 

 driver, because the horse is too confused. He is continually 

 going this way or that way, and it is too much work to put 

 upon the cultivator. The cultivator will do the work if 3'ou 

 keep the horse in his proper path, and keep it scratching. 

 That will make good work of it, but it is a trying job. I 

 would rather go straight ahead. Now, then, I got up a tool 

 different from the one that the president has shown here. He 

 has shown you a tool to put on the end of the plow-beam so 

 as to bring the horse's whiffletree out on one side of the beam. 

 I do not like that so well as I do the Syracuse Grape hoe, 

 which is rigged up to get at the same thing, but is used with 

 a pole like that, — the ordinary two-horse pole, — and the for- 

 ward end is run or projected out to the right and passes the 

 horse clear. At the cultivator end it also projects in the same 

 way, and has one fixed handle and one movable handle, operating 

 a disc-wheel which acts as a rudder. Of course, if you were to 



