■SEVENTEENTH ANNUAL MEETING. 



141 



decay into a mulch. The grass crop has usually been large ; 

 last year it was enormous, thick and tall, standing to the top 

 of the fore wheels of a buggy, and no one could say that it 

 was ever insufficient for a good mulch. In all other details 

 of care the treatment has been the same in, the two plats. 



j\Ir. Hitchings publicly contends that the orchard should 

 have been for some time in sod to have made the test a fair 

 one. In reply, it can be said that the orchard was in sod, 

 though the trees were not mulched, for most of the first 

 twenty-five years of its life previous to its being taken for 

 this experiment. The roots of the trees ought to have gotten 

 used to sod during that time. This experiment has been 

 going four years now, and the trees, as we shall show, are 

 not yet "broke in'' to taking their food and drink in the same 

 trough with grass. As the "breaking in" is telling badly on 

 these trees, we may well ask, How long \\\\\ it take to make 

 a sod-mulch orchard out of a tilled one? 



It should be of interest to know w'hat happened in the 

 Auchter orchard during the quarter century it was not tilled. 

 Sometimes figures talk. At the end of the twenty-five years 

 :in sod the Auchter orchard was sold to the present owner as 

 common farm land. Its former owner had contemplated cut- 

 ting it down as worthless. After sezrral years of tillage the 

 ■orchard is paying Mr. Auchter, for an az'erage of a number 

 of years, ten per cent, on a valuation of one thousand dollars 

 per acre. 



A member of the staff of the Ohio Station, who says that 

 his institution is the "original official champion" of sod-mulch 

 culture for the apple, claims that proper methods of mulching 

 have not been used in the Auchtei' orchard, that the cut grass 

 is not sufficient and that straw or litter of some kind ought 

 to have been added to the grass mulch ; this is the "original 

 official" mulch, as near as I can make out. of whicli the Ohio 

 Station is "champion." In answer to this criticism, I have 

 only to say that there are not many who follow the Ohio 

 method in New York. Sod-mulchers in this State mostly 

 follow^ Mr. Hitcliings' way of simply cutting the grass for a 

 nnilch, and therefore this Station is testing his method. 



