New York AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT Station. 481 
There is much to show that there is an abundance of plant- 
food of all kinds in both plats of this experiment. The trees 
in the tilled plat showed, in all respects, good feeding and 
such trees in the sod plat as could get any considerable por- 
tion of their roots into the tilled plat, or the adjoining tilled 
fields, likewise seemed to be well fed. Moreover the fertilizers 
added to certain rows in each plat, as described on page 452 
give no appreciable results in either plat. Another strong 
proof of the high degree of the fertility of the land is the 
growth of grass it produces. It would be hard to find, in or 
out of an orchard, a better stand of orchard grass than that 
annually produced on the sod plat of this experiment. 
There should be little difference in the amounts of the sey- 
eral plant foods in the two plats, if, as may be assumed, they 
contained the same amounts at the beginning of the experi- 
ment, for only the crop of apples has been taken from either 
plat. Table XI seems to show that there is a little more 
potash, phosphoric acid and nitrogen in the sod plat than in 
the tilled one. The differences are so slight as to be quite 
within the range of variation yet it may be that they come from 
the fact that the tilled trees have made a much greater growth 
and have produced much larger crops than those in sod and 
thus have used more food. 
If lack of food is the cause of the deleterious effect of the 
sod on the trees it is starvation in the midst of abundance. 
The food is in the soil but because of a lack of water to bring 
it into solution, or because the soluble fertility is monopolized 
by the grass, the trees do not get it. The fact that the grass 
does not seemingly suffer suggests that the grass roots surround 
the tree roots and have the first opportunity to take moisture 
and food and leave but little for the rootlets of the trees. 
The last consideration suggests that in deep, fertile soils 
where the tree roots may go down and escape the grass roots, 
competition between the two plants may be less strenuous and 
the effect of the grass on the apple therefore less harmful than 
in the comparatively shallow soil of the Auchter orchard. 
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