202 PROCEEDINGS OF THIRTY-THIRD FRUIT-GROWERS ' CONVENTION. 



humus, and the harder will be the strain on your trees and your 

 nerves. The strain you can overcome very largely. 



The third year, however, you will begin to see results, and the fourth 

 year, unless your soil is very badly off, the battle will be won, when 

 you will begin to get an ever-increasing crop of natural grass— 

 or artificial, if you wish— which you will plow-under next spring in a 

 dry, matured condition, in which it will be worth about ten times as 

 much as it would have been were it plowed under green, and you will 

 find yourself on a self-sustaining basis, when you can get crops of fruit 

 indefinitely, and where your soil will get better and better instead of 

 worse and worse, provided, of course, that you continue to cultivate in 

 exactly this way. 



I lay stress on this way because it always provides loose, cultivated 

 ground on one side of your tree and also provides frequent firebreaks, 

 which will be very necessary when the grass gets well started, as it will 

 about the third year. 



The mere fact of the soil being unplowed for a year is a benefit to it, 

 as it turns over next year with a mellow, granular appearance, more and 

 more resembling its virgin state as our system continues: but this is a 

 mere detail. 



"We are now told that plants, in growing, secrete in the soil substances 

 which in time, prevent their further growth and development. In for- 

 ests we find many species, large and small, growing indefinitely in 

 health and vigor without any sign of starvation or soil exhaustion. The 

 secret of this, I believe, is that one species feeds on the excretions of the 

 other; and I believe that grass and weeds growing in an orchard or 

 vineyard feed on the excretions from the trees and vines, just as surely 

 as they in their turn provide the only adequate supply of that absolutely 

 indispensable humus on which the trees and vines must live, if they live 

 at all. 



At all events, we have reached in our experiments a result which 

 points very strongly in this direction. 



Six years ago our sole aim and object in life was to destroy every 

 4 'weed," so called, and every evidence of a weed, in our orchard. We 

 plowed, and then plowed again, and then cultivated about four or five 

 times, until the surface of the ground was almost as fine as Portland 

 cement— and baked 'about as hard, when it got a little water on it. 

 The first time we irrigated the water would soak out about two feet 

 from the ditch. The second time, about eight inches; and the third 

 time, it would be running out of the end of a row thirty trees long in 

 about thirty minutes, and would not soak six inches away from the 

 ditch in twenty-four hours. By next spring, when we plowed, we 

 would have about two inches of green grass to plow under. At that 

 time we were compelled to irrigate trees on "old" land every seven or 



