STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 99 



it deserves. I would suggest, therefore, that it should be reserved 

 for our special consideration at some future meeting. 



The President. I believe that the sooner we disabuse ourselves 

 of this idea of growing grass and apples from the same ground, 

 the sooner we shall succeed in growing good fruit. It is too 

 much to expect or to demand from the soil at the same time. As 

 a successful orchardist remai'ked to me on passing through his 

 orchard a year ago, " It is no use, you cannot grow apples and 

 grass on the same field." I will qualify that statement: you can 

 do it, but it requires the very highest state of manuring in order to 

 obtain both. If you would raise good fruit and at the same time 

 a good crop of grass, you must manure very heavily with animal 

 manure, and j'ou must repeat the application very often. But if a 

 good, strong soil set to apple trees is kept under good cultivation 

 with no vegetable matter growing there only the trees and their 

 fruit, it requires but little manure besides what nature showers 

 down upon the land, in order to grow bountiful crops of fruit. 

 Mulching is practicable with small trees ; it is desirable with all 

 trees. I was about to say it was impracticable with an orchard of 

 full grown trees, inasmuch as it becomes necessary to cover the 

 entire ground in order to prevent a growth of grass and weeds, 

 and if a man has an extensive orchard, it is impossible to do it. 

 But the plough tells the story. 



Mr. Sawyer. I did not intend to speak of mulching as a sub- 

 stitute for cultivation by any means, but as a most valuable 

 adjunct to it, and as furnishing an abundant source of fertilizing 

 material. Mulching as usually understood, does not mean cover- 

 ing the whole ground of an orchard ; and we ought not to say 

 because a man has an extensive orchard in which he cannot cover 

 the whole space occupied by the roots of large trees, that it is 

 impracticable to do something towards it. And why may not any 

 farmer do what the gentleman from Belfast, (Mr. Brackett,) 

 reports his friend as doing, " go i^to the woods and get cart loads 

 of leaves, ferns and brakes," to spread upon his land ? Why may 

 not those of us who live near the seaboard obtain unlimited -quan- 

 tities of rock-weed for the same purpose ? But when the trees of 

 an orchard become large, spreading and thrifty, (as we hope some 

 day to see them in all parts of our good State,) the branches, 

 extending with the roots, will annually shower down upon the 

 teeming soil the exceeding wealth of fertilizing material com- 

 pounded by the hand of the Lord of the Orchard and of the 



