ELEVENTH ANNUAL MEETING. 67 



certain principles that are generally applicable, but what I want 

 to point out is the fact that because ]\Ir. Hitchings has been 

 very successful through a system of sod culture, it does not 

 follow that the same success would follow the general appli- 

 cation of his methods. Mr. Hitchings seems to have struck it 

 just right, but what I want to do is to throw out a warning 

 against the idea that because Hitchings can do it anybody can 

 do it. 



You must work things out for yourselves. If your condi- 

 tions are such that you need tillage you will not be successful 

 without it. You must adapt your system of culture to the 

 conditions which surround you. 



Right over on my father's farm, not very many miles from 

 here, there is an example. My father was one of the success- 

 ful grow-ers and he used to grow under sod, but he used to 

 draw out load after load of manure to get a good crop. 



On other orchards, even when well manured and with the 

 best sod culture, it would be hard work to get a biennial 

 crop, so that I say it would be very unwise to draw a general 

 principle or a general conclusion from a single or even a num- 

 ber of successful examples, that sod culture w^as the thing. 

 You must apply these principles to your own conditions and 

 in a measure use your own judgment. Don't bank on sod 

 culture and don't bank on tillage. Use your judgment as to 

 what is best under the conditions which surround you. Work 

 it out for yourselves. It does not lie in what somebody else 

 will tell you. It lies in yourselves to apply certain fundamental 

 principles to supply what is necessary for bacterial life and for 

 plant life, and after that it is the man behind the gun that does 

 the work. 



Mr. Edwin Hoyt : I do not believe it depends altogether upon 

 the man behind the gun. Of course the man is an element, but 

 what is necessary to produce good apples like -some of these 

 we have been shown here to-day? You must have moisture, 

 and you must have plant food. You must have both. If Mr. 

 Hitchings is getting plant food by his system he will get apples 

 and fine apples, provided that he destroys the enemies that 

 hinder their perfection. I do not care how able a man is, if 

 he does not give his trees plant food he will not get fine 

 apples. 



