452 Agricultural Experiment Station, Ithaca, N. Y. 



clovers, sown in the spring, are much more useful in the general 

 farm rotations. This crimson clover is an annual and is capable 

 of living over winter. It may, therefore, be sown after the sum- 

 mer cultivation is done, and afford some benefit to the land at a 

 time when the trees are comparatively quiescent. The various 

 uses of crimson clover in the orchard are discussed at some length 

 in our Bulletin 102. Persons err in looking for a too heavy stand 

 of crimson clover. It must not be expected to give the amount 

 of herbage which the ordinary clover seeding does. Even a thin 

 covering, if it passes the winter, is very useful in improving the 

 conditions of the land; and a good fall stand which wholly kills 

 out during the winter is also worth the growing upon the greater 

 part of our fruit lands. We are convinced that crimson clover 

 has come to stay, but w^e are equally convinced that it is unwise 

 to rely upon it year by year for a cover crop. It will find its place 

 in a judicious alternation of cover crops, the particular alterna- 

 tion to be determined by every farmer for himself. 



Crimson clover is often sown too late. We think that the last 

 week in July or the first week in August is as late as it can be 

 sown with safety in the average year. If sown later, it obtains 

 too little root-hold; if sown in June, it becomes too ripe before 

 winter. The latest sowing which we know to have successfully 

 passed last winter, was made for us in a nursery at Dansville (by 

 F. M. Hartman) on the 17th of August. Upon the drier portions 

 of the area, the stand was very poor, but in the moister places it 

 made an excellent show this spring. Mr. George A. Sweet, of 

 Dansville, sowed a large area upon the 8th of August. In parts 

 of the field there was an excellent stand this spring, but in large 

 portions of it there was none. There are many experiences like 

 this, and most of them are traceable to a poor catch of seed in 

 the fall. What agencies underlie these poor catches it is difiicult 

 to determine, but they are probably such as are associated with 

 the mechanical preparation of the seed-bed, and are undoubtedly 

 of the same kind as those which are responsible for so many 

 poor stands of common clover. 



We made an experiment last year upon crimson clover upon 



