[X] 



Few persons, even among those whose business is tree culture, as 

 fruit-growers and nursery men, have any just conception of the value 

 of thorough mulching, as a means of promoting the health and 

 vigor of growing trees. In fact, such a mulching of the whole 

 ground as nature provides in the forest by the annual fall of the 

 leaves, may be said to be unknown in artificial culture, so rarely is 

 it practiced, yet its immediate effect in promoting new and vigorous 

 growth is such as would seem almost incredible to one who had not 

 witnessed it, and affords one of the most beautiful illustrations of 

 nature's methods of securing the most important results by such 

 simple and incidental means that they escape our notice, though 

 going on right under our eyes from year to year. 



Of course the richest food for plant consumption is in the soil 

 near the surface, but if that soil is subjected to alternations of tem- 

 perature and moisture, sometimes baked in clods, and at others 

 reduced to the consistency of mire, no roots can survive the changes. 

 In the forest, as I have elsewhere said, these changes are preven- 

 ted by the shade of the foliage and the mulching of fallen leaves. 

 The rich mould of the surface soil maintains an even temperature, 

 is always moist, and is everwhere permeated with fibrous roots 

 drawing nourishment from the rich sources which surround them, 

 and this process may be artificially imitated, and the same results 

 attained, by mulching, if properly done. It does not suffice to pile 

 a few inches of straw or manure around each tree for a short dis- 

 tance from the trunk. If the tree stands singly, at a distance from 

 others, the mulching should extend on every side beyond the spread 

 of its branches; and in the case of an orchard, or young wood, the 

 surface of the whole area it occupies should be covered with leaves, 

 straw, shavings, chip-dirt, tan-bark, or whatever material is most 

 available, to a depth of several inches. I first learned the value of 

 the process when a young man, on a coffee plantation in Cuba, where 

 a portion of the hands were constantly employed in collecting re- 

 fuse .vegetable matter of aU kinds, and spreading over the whole 

 ground between the rows of the coffee bushes, to such depth as 

 served to keep the surface cool and of even temperature, and also 

 to prevent the growth of grass and. weeds and thus supersede the 

 necessity -of ploughing between the rows. 



Afterwards, when engaged in fruit culture in New Jersey, I prac- 

 ticed it in my vineyard and orchards with most satisfactory results, 

 of which an account was published more than thirty years ago, in 

 the Horticulturist, then edited by A. J. Downing.* 



The trees and vines responded at once to my efforts in their be- 

 half by such increased luxuriance of growth that it was easy to dis- 

 tinguish the portions that had been mulched as far as they could 

 be seen, and, on digging into the surface soil under the mulching 

 at any point, I found it filled with fibrous roots precisely as is the 

 case in the leaf mould in the woods. No fruit-grower who has once 

 tried this experiment wiU ever after forego the advantages it offers, 

 and I have spoken of it thus at length from the obviously vital im- 

 portance of its bearing on forest culture. A moment's reflection 

 will show that in the opening and thinning of native wood which 

 had grown thickly together, a heavy mulching of such portions of 



* Sorticulturist, Vol. 3, p. 113. 



