Vol. LXI. No. 2750. 
NEW YORK, OCTOBER 11, 1902. 
II PER YEAR 
THE HITCHINGS APPLE ORCHARD. 
WHAT DOES THE MULCHING ACCOMPLISH ? 
Bacterial Hired Men Under Ground. 
A FAIR DISCUSSION OF ALL SIDES. 
Part III. 
I stated last week that plowing would without doubt 
injure the orchard. But why should it ever be neces¬ 
sary to plow it? It may never be, yet possibly the 
time will come when the soil will need airing. We 
all know that air is necessary to the roots of growing 
plants. Without doubt one of the most useful things 
about cultivating is that it lets the air and sunshine 
into the soil. It is quite possible that after some years 
this shaded and moist soil will need 
plowing in order to receive a good air¬ 
ing. These low-headed trees with their 
feeding roots at the surface would be 
badly hurt by such work. Mr. Hitchings 
is not troubled by any such forebodings. 
His trees are healthy and promising, 
and he is planting new ones by the thou¬ 
sand. He has 1,000 peach trees with 
alternate rows root-pruned as Mr. 
Stringfellow advocates. An old pasture, 
not plowed in 30 years, has been set in 
apple trees. Small holes were dug right 
in the tough old sod and the trees, with 
roots cut to about five inches, were 
planted without plowing or cultivating. 
The grass has been cut and piled around 
the trees. Some one will ask: 
“Does Mr. Hitchings realize what a 
loss is represented when that fine hay is 
permitted to rot on the ground?” 
Yes, he was formerly a dairyman, and 
well knows the value of good hay. He 
even cuts Alfalfa and spreads it around 
the trees! 
“What is his argument in favor of 
such a wasteful process?” 
He doesn’t consider it a waste. That 
grass feeds the trees in two ways. The 
direct fertility which it contains is con¬ 
siderable—a ton of green Timothy con¬ 
tains as much nitrogen as a ton of aver¬ 
age manure. The mulching effect of the 
grass, as we have stated before also in¬ 
directly provides food for the trees by 
stimulating the work of bacteria, which 
work over both the organic matter and 
the soil itself. Mr. Hitchings believes 
that the loss in feeding value of the 
grass is more than offset by the saving 
in time and labor. Under his system he 
figures that one man with a good team 
can take care of 4,000 trees—except the 
spraying and picking. To cultivate that 
number of trees thoroughly would re¬ 
quire four or five men and teams; be¬ 
sides 10 tons or more of fertilizer would 
be needed. Is this argument worth con¬ 
sidering? The question of hired help in 
districts back in the country is just now the hardest 
one for farmers to answer. Mr. Hitchings says that 
he does not want his wife to spend her days as cook 
and washerwoman for a colony of hired men! Those 
bacteria at work for him under the mulch do not 
strike or get drunk or leave just when they have 
learned the business. True, the larger growers tell 
us of hiring Italians in large gangs so that they board 
themselves and do not interfere with the privacy of 
the farm family. We do not hear much of the darker 
side of this foreign labor question, and in any event, 
gangs of foreign laborers are not for the 100-acre 
farmer of average means. Any man who must hire 
a big gang of laborers is more or }egs engaged in 
speculative farming, and comparatively few of us are 
qualified to take the risks involved. It must be ad¬ 
mitted that where it will succeed the “mulch method” 
will multiply the power of the farmer’s own family to 
produce fruit without calling in outside help. We 
must remember that some expert poultry men criti¬ 
cise Mr. Mapes for his “easy-going” method of keep¬ 
ing hens. Both Mapes and Hitchings attempt to make 
hen and tree take care of itself as far as may be. Mr. 
Mapes will say that the man who waits on his hens 
and takes steps for them which they might take them¬ 
selves often gets very poor wages. Mr. Hitchings 
will say that those who use horse and hired man in 
place of his bacteria may get more fruit per tree, but 
NECTAR GRAPE. Fig. 278. See Ruralisms, Page 690 
they do not win gold medals over his fruit or pay a 
mortgage any faster than he does when labor and fer¬ 
tilizer bills are settled. 
As I go about the country I meet farmers every¬ 
where who are hunting for some plan that will enable 
one man or one family to produce the largest possible 
crop. There are plenty of men and women who are 
driven to this sort of farming through necessity. 
Grass is the greatest partner such farmers can have. 
Some of them cut the grass and sell it as hay, while 
others sell it standing in the field. Others pastuie 
hogs, cattle or horses. Mr. Hitchings feeds it to his 
trees just as a stockman would feed it to sheep oi 
cattle. Thus far he has used no fertilizers—not see¬ 
ing the need of them. While the trees keep their 
healthy color and vigorous growth he will add noth¬ 
ing, as he is satisfied that the mulched soil provides 
all the plant food that the trees require. Let no man 
think that this “mulch system” is as easy to carry 
out as it is to talk about. The soil is good, natural 
grass land, and I should judge that springs abound. 
The grass in that orchard would run Mr. Clark’s fa¬ 
mous yield a good race. The trees are sprayed again 
and again—kept blue with the Bordeaux Mixture. As 
an experiment I am growing trees without cultiva¬ 
tion in an old field where weeds and thin grass grow. 
This thin growth is cut and thrown around the trees, 
but it would be nonsense to call it “mulching” after 
seeing the great piles of grass which Mr. 
Hitchings banks around his young trees. 
I am obliged to use fertilizer in addition 
to the mulch, and even then do not ob¬ 
tain the growth on young trees that Mr. 
Hitchings does with nothing but grass. 
His soil is much stronger naturally than 
mine, and this must be remembered by 
those who undertake to try his method. 
The mulch does not put fertility into 
the soil. It merely helps take out what 
there is there, and the richer the soil 
the easier the fertility comes out. 
We shall know more about this mulch 
method in a few years when the trees 
in the old pasture come in bearing. This 
is one of the boldest experiments ever 
attempted in fruit growing. The soil 
of this pasture had not been disturbed 
for years. Instead of plowing and har¬ 
rowing as the experts advise Mr. Hitch¬ 
ings simply dug small holes where the 
trees are to stand. The roots of the trees 
were cut back to about five inches, and 
the top cut back to correspond. These 
trees were set in the little holes and the 
earth stamped hard around them. That 
was all. When the grass reached a fair 
height it was cut with the mower, raked 
and piled around the trees and left to rot 
there. There were about 2,000 of these 
trees set this Spring, and in a careful 
examination of them I could not find 
half a dozen dead ones. They had made 
a surprising growth, and were thrifty 
as need be. In my section we are so ac¬ 
customed to using fertilizers and “feed¬ 
ing the soil” that I could hardly believe 
that these trees had not been fed at all 
—save what they had been able to take 
from that old pasture soil. I do not 
find such old fields capable, alone, of 
producing large crops when they are 
plowed up. We need good dressings of 
manure or fertilizer to make them pro¬ 
fitable, when cropped in the ordinary 
way, yet here they were starting a 
growth upon these apple trees that 
would have been a credit to the most in¬ 
tense cultivation. It was a mighty argument for the 
mulch when we consider how little it cost to get this 
orchard started. The scientific men say the young 
trees may start well enough in such a season as we 
have had this year, but that something will stunt or 
kill them before they bear! It is easy for any man 
to shake his head at a new way of doing things, but 
it will puzzle the wisest to tell just what is to kill 
such thrifty trees. It must be understood by all that 
this way of growing trees is no lazy man’s method. 
There is work enough about it to satisfy the hardest 
hustler, but it increases his power to care for a large 
number of trees. The peach trees planted on the 
Stringfellow plan show some interesting things. I 
will talk about them next week. h. w. o. 
