86 STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



Just a word in regard to cover crops. The next problem that 

 appealed to us, after the question of getting fertility back into 

 the land, was to get some humus, and we took four or five 

 different crops and used them either as cover crops or general 

 crops in the orchard. We grew four or five acres of the white 

 pea bean simply as a crop, with the idea of getting a crop of 

 beans. I have never been at all familiar with it as a source of 

 humus. I was very favorably impressed with it, so much so 

 that we intend to use it largely this year, merely as a means of 

 getting humus back into the soil. We put that on a section of 

 the orchard up in an old sheep pasture and we got a magnificent 

 growth of beans with no special application of fertilizer, which 

 if plowed under would have added an immense amount of 

 humus and a good amount of nitrogen. Then we used buck- 

 wheat, which I think is one of the best things to start with. 

 You can get that to grow almost anywhere. We found that 

 satisfactory, as we got a fine growth, and it leaves the land in 

 the finest condition. If land is physically in a poor condition 

 nothing will improve it more than buckwheat. The Soy bean 

 is also a fine cover crop. Planted in drills and cultivated once 

 or twice it gives far better results than sown broadcast. We 

 think most of our cover crops should be put in that way. Then 

 we also used a small vetch, which in Nova Scotia makes a large 

 growth, but with us it did not, I suppose due to the character 

 of the land on which we were growing it. Another year we 

 are planning to put in first a crop of buckwheat, then plow that 

 under and put in a crop of beans, and then follow it with still 

 another crop, in order to get humus back into the land and cause 

 a satisfactory growth. 



Just one word before I close, on the matter of crops. We 

 cast about for some crops that we could grow in the orchard 

 that would first be satisfactorv to the orchard, and then return 

 us some money. I was disappointed that Prof. Morse did not 

 discuss the potato question, because I wanted to hear something 

 in regard to the potato, as we are interested in that and think 

 of using it as a crop next year. We discarded that as an 

 orchard crop principally from my experience in Nova Scotia, 

 where the potato is almost as extensively grown as it is up here, 

 but scarcely ever' grown as an orchard crop because their 



