I 
SOD CULTURE vs. SOD MULCH. 
That Western New York Experiment. 
I have been very much interested in 
II. W. C.’s account of the New York Ex¬ 
periment Station’s comparison of sod cul¬ 
ture with clean cultivation in the orchard 
chosen for the final solution of this much 
discussed orchard problem. I must con¬ 
fess to an unusual anxiety, amounting al¬ 
most to impatience, to know just what 
caused those few trees in the sod area to 
appear dark green and vigorous, while their 
fellows were sallow and discouraged, and 
doing their part nobly to inspire those 
“who read as they run” to pronounce the 
sod mulch (?) method of culture a failure. 
I am very sadly disappointed, indeed, to 
find that these few vigorous, good-looking, 
productive, profitable trees, after all, have 
to credit natural conditions and environ¬ 
ment for their ideal growth and excellent 
returns. I had most ardently hoped that 
those few trees had been really and truly 
mulched by human hands, with cornstalks, 
straw, old hay—any old thing in the way 
of coarse vegetable matter that would have 
produced practically the results as did 
those adjacent and kindly stone walls. But 
I do not find in this so-called comparison 
of sod mulching with clean culture that a 
single tree was mulched at all except 
where Nature “took a hand.’” 
It is most truly to be deplored that, in 
the country-wide discussion of the sod 
mulch method compared with clean culture 
or clean culture with cover crops, those 
opposed to the idea of mulching persist in 
confusing the sod mulch plan with sod 
culture —sod culture, just the plain, old- 
time way of mowing the perhaps scanty 
grass or vegetation, allowing it to lie where 
it falls and permitting the trees to exist 
under the undisturbed, uninterrupted, un¬ 
changed conditions under which they have 
existed for years—perhaps decades. In the 
results of the New York Experiment Sta¬ 
tion’s work along this line, most interest¬ 
ingly given by H. \V. C., there is not a 
word to show that a single forkful of mat¬ 
ter was applied as a mulch to an individual 
tree, nor that a hand was turned or a 
single effort made to bring about a fair 
comparison of a truly mulched tree with a 
cultivated tree. This as reward for our 
interest, hopefulness and confidence; as a 
reward for our expectation that at last the 
mulch method had, in an unbiased, unpre¬ 
judiced manner, been fairly matched with 
clean or cover crop cultivation. The clean 
culture, it is true, was carried out to a 
finish; but the true sod mulch method, in 
New York, is yet a subject for future trial 
and experiment. 
The Ohio Station has been regarded as 
having originally directed attention to 
mulching as a means of culture, and con¬ 
sidered as the original official champion of 
the plan. Never has our station contend d 
that the orchardist whose land may be 
easily and safely tilled annually, and who 
prefers to plow and cultivate and grow 
cover crops, should abandon the method of 
his choice and inaugurate the plan of 
mowing and mulching. Surely we have 
never even dreamed of advising anyone to 
SIX SEASONS’ GROWTH WITH SOD MULCH. Fig. 475. 
SIX SEASONS’ GROWTH WITH SOD CULTURE. Fig. 476. 
adopt the plan of mowing alone, as has 
been done in the experiment under consid¬ 
eration. Our station has shown, in its 
comparison of different methods of orchard 
culture—Bulletin No. 171 —that the sod cul¬ 
ture plan—the section in which the trees 
were planted in sod, where little spaces 
were kept cleanly cultivated with rake or 
hoc about each tree; where the grass is 
merely mown and allowed to lie where it 
falls; where no mulching of individual 
trees is done, is a comparative failure- 
only a few degrees less unsatisfactory than 
where persistent annual plowing and culti¬ 
vation without the growing of cover crops 
is followed. And yet this unsatisfactory 
and impracticable sod culture plan, minus 
the possible advantage of cultivating a 
small space about each tree, is the scheme 
which, so far, every opponent of the sys¬ 
tematic mulching of fruit trees has adopted 
to prove that mulching is a farce and a 
failure. It is just as if Mr. A. would 
recommend thorough spraying with lime 
and sulphur for scale, and Bordeaux Mix¬ 
ture and arsenate of lead for fungi and 
the Codling worm, while Mr. B., to prove 
that spraying is a howling failure, playfully 
sprinkles his trees with water from Clear 
Creek, thus demonstrating to the world that 
Neighbor A. is either over-enthusiastic, 
woefully mistaken, or a downright im¬ 
poster. 
The sod mulch system of orchard culture 
which the Ohio Station has recommended, 
and which, incidentally is being employed 
by several of Ohio’s foremost apple grow¬ 
ers, of their own choice, is a plan in which 
mulching, as it should, plays the leading 
role. It is a plan especially suitable for 
the fruit grower of the hilly sections of 
the country, where the choicest orchard 
product may be grown, yet where plowing 
and cultivation cannot safely be continued 
even for a very limited term of years with¬ 
out a disastrous wasting and loss of soil 
and fertility. In this method our station 
has endeavored to make clear that, first of 
ail, each individual tree is to be mulched 
to the extent that evaporation of moisture 
be checked, and abundant plant food sup¬ 
plied, or that it be rendered available by 
the chemical processes which occur beneath 
a covering of the soil, where decomposi¬ 
tion of organic matter is in constant prog¬ 
ress. The results of this faithful adher¬ 
ence to the plan of mulching have con¬ 
tinued to exhibit the benefits of the prac¬ 
tice just as those few remarkable trees 
in the New York Station’s sod plot showed 
where their root systems flourished and 
luxuriated beneath the soft sides of those 
rocks in the old stone wall; where there 
was moisture present, the soil cool and 
lively and a i abundance of organic matter 
available. 
If the orchard area is not producing 
enough material to mulch each separate tree 
to the degree that moisture be conserved, 
that abundant plant food is at all times avail¬ 
able 'for the perfect nutrition of the trees 
and the perfection of the fruit, material 
must be brought in from outside sources. 
On the steep, worn slopes of southern Ohio 
straw at $8 per ton has paid a handsome 
profit when used as a mulch in apple grow- 
