Book Description

Excerpt from Experiments in Orchard Management in New England The object of the orchard in the - first place is to produce fruit. If we are to expect tree growth when the tree is young and a sustaining productive growth when mature, we must ren der the conditions favorable for such results. Just how much and often cultivation is needed, and the best means of obtaining it, kinds of implements to use, etc., are open questions. Results are what we are after. If one person can demonstrate that his orchard is more productive than others, we should look into his method of tillage and satisfy ourselves how closely it can be applied to our conditions. The nature of the soil is of great importance in considering this question. Our soil may require constant cultivation or tillage in order to get desirable tree growth; while another with comparatively little attention may be very responsive. As a rule, however, it is an excep tional orchard that gives satisfactory results without receiving occasional tillage. Some lands, in fact many in New England, are too rolling for continuous tillage. This would result in the washing or gullying out of the land and the loss of our best surface soils, which should be prevented. Where the land is level this is another matter and can be practised. On lands only moderately rolling and on others where only certain por tions are liable to wash, a crop of some kind could be sown, known as a cover crop, which answers well in keeping the soil from washing throughout the fall and winter. On rolling land washing can largely be prevented by cultivating the soil cross wise, with the contour of the hill. Where the wash is liable to be heavy even if this is done, if a plowed4furrow is run along the contour several rods apart, the distance depending upon the steepness of the slope, this will largely overcome the trouble. The benefits from cultivation will usually be large. A promi nent pomologist has written: If tillage and timely effort are good for corn, and peach trees, and blackberries, they ought also to be good for apple trees. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.