ELEJ'ENTH ANNUAL MEETING. 43 



vinced from a wide observation that this burned out condition 

 is the primary trouble with most of our non-productive soils. 



We have seen analyzed many of these non-productive soils, 

 and have seen it demonstrated that that, in all probability, was 

 what was the matter. So I would emphasize right here to the 

 fruit growers of Connecticut the importance of moisture in the 

 soils in our orchards. Xo fruit can fill out well and get into 

 fine condition without plenty of moisture just at the ripening 

 time. Air. Hale can tell you that, especially of the peach. It 

 does its filling out largely in the last two or three days, and unless 

 the soil is in such a condition, you do not get as fine fruit. If 

 the moisture is absent wx have these little hard peaches on 

 which the skin is shriveled. They are nothing but peach pits 

 with a little skin over them. I cannot emphasize this too 

 strongly. It is one of the most important propositions that 

 the fruit grower has to contend with — this question of the 

 depletion of the soil and the deficiency of moisture in the grow- 

 ing crop. 



Now vegetable matter may be maintained in our soils in quite 

 a number of ways. Perhaps one method is by sod culture, but 

 I will not say very much about that because I am to be followed 

 by a gentleman who has produced this year one of the finest crops 

 of apples that has been seen anywhere by an intelligent system 

 of culture. His crop was one of the finest that I have known 

 of anywhere in New York State. So I wall not say very much 

 about sod culture. Where there is an excessive amount of 

 moisture in the soil, it may be well to exhaust the soil of some 

 of that w^ater. 



You go north here, and there are many places where they 

 keep the sod on the land for the purpose of pumping out the 

 w^ater that is in the land. I do not question but that under 

 such conditions it may be possible to grow a fine orchard in 

 sod ; under conditions wdiere there is too much moisture natur- 

 ally in the land. But if the system of sod culture is followed 

 and the grower continually grasses over his land, and leaves it 

 on the ground so that in time it forms a mulch so that the 

 vegetable matter goes back into the soil, there is no question 

 but what that kind of soil culture may be a most economical 

 way of supplying vegetable matter to the soil. But I would 

 say this most emphatically; in the usual sod orchard where 



