Vol. LXVII. No. 3029. 
NEW YORK, FEBRUARY IS, 1908. 
WEEKLY, $1.00 PER YEAR. 
THE TRUE PLAN OF SOD-MULCHING. 
How It Is Done in Ohio. 
Is it not a wise and broadly generous provision 
of our Creator that beautiful trees, vines and plants 
which produce fragrant blossoms and luscious fruits, 
may be grown successfully under widely different 
conditions? Were it not so happily arranged the 
husbandman of valley and plain should have been 
the recipient of blessings and sources of pleasure, 
wealth and independence denied his neighbor on hill¬ 
top and mountain side. As it is, it is quite possible 
for each to meet the 
other on a common plane 
either on the market or 
in the exhibition hall. 
Both may be skilled in 
the culture of fine fruits 
and in the principles of 
the maintenance of fer¬ 
tility in their respective 
soils. Both may be suc¬ 
cessful horticulturists of 
modern ideas and prac¬ 
tices—even though those 
ideas and practices may 
seem radically opposed. 
iThe above expresses, 
exactly, the attitude of 
the writer toward dif¬ 
ferent methods which 
tend to the conservation 
or improvement of the 
natural soil forces or 
constituents which God 
undoubtedly intended 
should be carefully hus¬ 
banded. 
I fully appreciate the 
excellence of cover crop 
culture of orchards, and 
have carefully explained 
and confidently recom¬ 
mended such a plan of 
orchard management to 
scores of inquirers 
whose land, I ascer¬ 
tained, was level or 
nearly so—where the 
washing away of the 
soil by heavy rains was 
a phenomenon rarely 
observed or seriously 
taken into consideration. 
But, at the same time, I 
am and shall continue to 
be just as confident of 
the merits of the true 
sod-mulch treatment of 
orchards, which may 
not only be substituted 
satisfactorily for plow¬ 
ing and culture on most 
soils, if the owner 
choose honestly to do so, but which is available as a 
special dispensation on orchard land that is sharply 
undulating or so steep and rough that continuous cul¬ 
tivation would mean, within a very few seasons, a 
tragedy in soil husbandry which no belated precaution 
would suffice to turn aside. 
In Mr. Auchter’s orchard a fair comparison of the 
true sod-mulch method with clean cultivation cannot, 
by any possibility, be made at such short notice. I 
am free to say that I do not think that a fair com¬ 
parison ever can be made under such conditions to be¬ 
gin with. The orchard at the outset had been under 
a system of annual cultivation. Continuous cultiva¬ 
tion, even with cover crops, necessarily becomes a 
“hand to mouth” system of plant feeding. Soil turn¬ 
ing and stirring favors a rapid decomposition of the 
vegetable constituents of the soil. This decomposi¬ 
tion causes chemical or bacterial activity which un¬ 
locks mineral elements of fertility, which thereby be¬ 
come available as plant food. Except on soil of re¬ 
markable strength and reserve force, both in humus 
and mineral matter, the time soon arrives when upon 
the growing and annual turning under of cover crops 
or manuring of the soil, depends the continuity of this 
THE COVER CROP METHOD OF ORCHARD CULTURE. Fig. 53. 
MULCHED WITH 100 POUNDS DISCOLORED STRAW PER TREE. Fig. 31. 
“fuel burning and food liberating” process. The 
method is directly opposed to the conservative and 
accumulative processes of Nature which are gradually 
gathering together and holding in reserve and pre¬ 
paring for future use the elements which will be de¬ 
manded by growing and fruiting trees and plants. 
There is a difference that is beyond comparison, be¬ 
tween a true, well-developed sod and a newly sown 
grass crop, so far as its effects upon the soil are con¬ 
cerned. In true and mature sod conditions we find 
that the soil is not only thickly threaded with the live 
root systems of the grasses, but contains dead and de¬ 
caying roots which have performed their function, are 
returning to the soil the elements which composed 
them and rendering the soil structure more and more 
porous by these consecutive growths and their decay. 
Upon the surface of the soil the mature sod conditions 
reveal not only a living fabric of the current season’s 
growth clothing the surface, but decomposed and de¬ 
composing vegetable matter of preceding seasons, 
growth returning “ashes to ashes and dust to dust” 
and in itself conserving soil moisture to some degree. 
Its mulchlike covering of the soil also affords, to some 
extent, conditions suitable for the activity of nitrify- 
• ing bacteria which grad¬ 
ually render available 
the inorganic constitu¬ 
ents of the soil. It pre¬ 
serves a comparatively 
even degree of tempera¬ 
ture of the soil—main¬ 
taining a lower degree 
in Summer and a higher 
degree in Winter than 
in soil that is bare of 
vegetation. It was found 
at the Ohio Station that 
even a moderate sod of 
mixed grasses and weeds 
lessened the depth of 
freezing 10 inches. 
Where the surface was 
bare and exposed the 
ground froze to the 
depth of 18 inches, while 
under the sod referred 
to it froze but eight 
inches. The exposure to 
cold of the two adjoin¬ 
ing plots was identical. 
The sowing of a grass 
crop on soil that has 
been cultivated, means 
an immediate heavy tax 
upon the available or¬ 
ganic and inorganic 
forces of that soil, as 
well as a tremendous 
drain upon its moisture 
content through the mil¬ 
lions of voracious feed¬ 
ing rootlets striving for 
the establishment of the 
host of plants contesting 
with each other for pos¬ 
session. There is yet no 
counteracting agency at 
work to break the force 
of this sudden and fierce 
demand upon the re-> 
sources of the soil. Plant 
food and water are 
licked up and appro¬ 
priated without regard 
for the needs of longer 
established plants or 
trees which occupy the field. Among these there 
cannot but be restriction, deprivation and suffering for 
want of their usual apportionment of the elements 
necessary to growth and fruit bearing, especially 
when no provision is made, no effort put forth to 
ease the blow which has been dealt. If one-half of 
the area of the Auchtcr orchard could have been 
brought under mature sod conditions at the outset, 
the effect of semi-starvation which was the past sea¬ 
son apparent, would not have been noticeable in so 
marked a degree. But that would not have been suffi¬ 
cient in a fair test of sod-mulching with clean culti- 
