APPLES 93 
many mountain orchards the stony soils 
produce the best trees. Loose stones may 
be placed to form shelf terraces between 
each two rows of trees. Unless the soil 
is very thin, stones may be considered as 
a, benefit rather than otherwise, because 
of the value they have to the land in 
assisting drainage and in protecting soil 
moisture. It is noticeable that fruit trees 
near rock piles or stone fences suffer 
little from drought. 
Clay Land 
Apple trees will grow on a great va- 
riety of soils, but they feel most at home 
and give their best results on deep, rich 
clays and loams. Why they prefer these 
soils it is impossible to say, but apple 
trees seem to be suited to clays just as 
eacti are to desert sands. The early or 
summer apples do well on light or sandy 
soils because they ripen their crop before 
the hot season, when moisture is scarc- 
est. Late fall or winter varieties, which 
have to develop their fruit in the hot 
summer, when moisture is hardest to 
get, must have a soil that is retentive 
of moisture. Muck soils are rich and 
contain abundant moisture, but they pro- 
duce large, rank-growing trees with ten- 
der terminals that produce poor fruit. 
Rich Soil 
Apple soils should be rich and they 
should not be called upon to produce any- 
thing but apples. It takes a great deal 
of fertility in the land to produce the 
wood of the trees on an acre of orchard. 
The fertility that produces the fruit is 
over and above that required to grow the 
trees. There are few crops so exhaustive 
on land as a crop of nursery stock, and 
no tillers of the soil know so well how to 
fertilize the soil as do nurserymen. If 
trees continued to grow in the orchard 
with the vigor they are made to do in 
the nursery there would be a thousand- 
fold greater returns from the orchard 
than there are today. From my experi- 
ence and observation in horticulture, [ 
think it safe to say that 75 per cent of 
all the trees that leave nurseries die of 
starvation before they come to usefulness. 
Soil poverty destroys more trees than 
all the pests and plagues put to- 
gether. A soil cropped to death with 
corn or cotton or tramped hard by the 
feet of stock is a certain burying ground 
for the tender and well-favored tree from 
the fertile soil of a nursery. The reason 
timber trees grow so well in their native 
forests is that the fertile, spongy mould 
of the forest floor affords an ideal home 
for the little seedlings till they get big 
enough to fend for themselves. Soil for 
orchards should be as nearly as possible 
like nature’s model forest soil. Indeed, 
the best soils for fruit trees are those 
just vacated by the forest primeval and 
occupied by the orchard before they can 
be pre-empted by any other agricultural 
tenant. Mountain coves are ideal for 
orchards. 
W.N Hott, 
Raleigh, NC. 
New York Soils 
The apple will grow in a variety of 
soils. Even on a poor soil it will struggle 
to maintain its life and to reproduce 
through its fruit, as reproduction is the 
real object of all life, animal and vege- 
table. There are, however, certain kinds 
of soils that are much better adapted to 
the development of apple trees than oth- 
ers. A soil that contains a certain amount 
of clay in its composition is excellent. 
Trees will grow in a stiff clay, but such 
soil is often over-saturated with water 
and trees will not do their best with 
too much water about their roots. Air, 
which is necessary for the roots of trees 
and for all plants, is frequently shut out 
by the water in clay soil. Such soil 
snould be well underdrained before trees 
are planted in it. 
Clay and Sand 
A soil that is made up of a mixture 
of clay and sand, and is known as a clay 
loam, is excellent for apple trees. 
Trees will grow in a sandy soil, but 
they will not grow so large, neither will 
they produce so much fruit. The trees 
and the fruit on sandy soil are more 
subject to insect attack, for insects 
thrive better in a dry soil than in one 
that holds water for a long time. 
There are, however, variations in 
sandy soils that produce not only good 
