610 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



Orchard Culture: a Comparison of different Methods as 

 Applied in the Case of the Apple Orchard. By W. J. Green 

 and F. H. Ballou (U.S.A. Exp. Stn. Ohio, Bull 171; March 1906).— 

 The cover-crop method is excellent while the orchard is young : it 

 consists of disking or ploughing the orchard early in the spring, followed 

 during the season by spring tooth-harrow, fine-tooth cultivator or 

 weeder. Cultivation is continued until the middle of July, or even to 

 the middle of August, when some crop — such as soy beans, cow-peas, 

 with or without rye, and winter vetches — is sown. A good cover-crop 

 holds the leaves and snow, thereby lessening the depth of alternate 

 freezing and thawing ; turning under the crop makes the soil spongy 

 and friable, increases its moisture-holding capacity, and renders it 

 better able to resist drought. The continuous clean-culture method 

 exhausts the humus and is unsuited to sloping and steep ground. 

 Cultivation should cease in early autumn, the soil lying undisturbed 

 and uncovered till the next spring. In the sod-culture method the 

 apple trees were planted in generous excavations directly in the sod. 

 Immediately following the planting of the trees a circular area of 

 ground, three or four feet in diameter, was spaded or dug about each tree, 

 and the spaces were annually kept clean and mellow by frequent use 

 of hoe or rake throughout the growing seasons. The grass was cut 

 three or four times each season, keeping the surface smooth and sightly. 

 The grass as cut is allowed to lie where it falls, thereby adding a mulch 

 to the entire surface through which the new growth pushes up with 

 increased vigour. No fertiliser has been added to the circular cultivated 

 spaces, which are gradually enlarged to equal the diameter of the head 

 of the respective trees. Sod culture is the most expensive and laborious 

 plan of culture of the four methods tested : it may be utilised to 

 advantage upon small, very rough, or stony areas where mulching 

 material is not available, and about the home grounds where neatness and 

 sightliness of the grounds and lawn are desired. In the sod-mulch method 

 the trees are planted in grass, but instead of keeping a circular area 

 about each tree cultivated these spaces of similar size are at once 

 heavily mulched with straw ; fine-meshed wire-screen cylinders are placed 

 round the trees to prevent injury by mice and other rodents ; the grass, 

 as in the former method, is mown three or four times each season, but 

 instead of allowing it to lie where it falls it is raked up, divided, and 

 used to maintain the mulch about the trees. This method is well 

 adapted to orchards on sloping or steep ground, but is also well suited 

 for well-drained and level ground, is sightly, and the ground at all 

 seasons allows carting on. Continuous clean cropping was discontinued 

 as the soil commenced to be depleted of fertility and washed away ; this 

 method cannot, therefore, be recommended. The grass-mulch gave 

 even a better result after six years than the cover-crop ploughed in, 

 the sod- culture plot, in which the. soil immediately round the tree was 

 cultivated, being third. An examination of the soil with regard to roots 

 was made, and photographs show the amount of root : in top two inches ; 

 next four inches ; and next six inches of soil. — C. II. II. 



Orchids, Hybridisation of. By Leon Duval (Jour. Soc. Nat. Hort. 

 Fr.\ 4th series; vol. viii. ; June 1907). --An interesting paper in which 



