94 STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



were growing there if yoii passed along the road; that is, know they had 

 been growing. But they are like the oats; by the time you get them down 

 there isn't a great deal of material to them. If we could find something 

 that could just maintain the humus, it will help me out some. 



Mr. Crane: I would like to ask Mr. Hale if he uses anything that he 

 really gets any humus out of, down in Georgia or up in Connecticut? Same 

 as Mr. Hut chins has mentioned here? He gets so little humus from any- 

 thing he can put in a pear, apple, or peach orchard. When I was on Mr. 

 Hale's farm, I could not see any humus in the ground, same as on my own. 

 In a cultivated orchard in the summer perhaps might have been a little 

 clover there, or something, and if he cultivates it very early in the spring, 

 as he does, where does he get his humus? The only thing I have ever got 

 any humus out of, that I thought was genuine humus, is when I sow my 

 crimson clover and let it get out of bloom and turn it under; then I had a 

 woody stock and something that did rot and make humus; when I ploughed 

 it early and turned it under, I didn't get much humus, only a little from 

 the root. 



Mr. Hale: Things are seldom exactly what they seem. I am sure if 

 Mr. Crane would grow good vigorous crops of clover through August and 

 September, October and November, and into December, as they often grow 

 in this latitude, that no matter what you saw there, when you turned it 

 under in the spring, the roots of that clover plant would continually add 

 humus to the soil. Take our soil in Georgia, where we grow cow peas every 

 summer and let them die down in the fall killed by the frost, and they are 

 broken up by the harrow in the winter, when we turn them under in the 

 winter there is very little apparent matter to turn under. But if Brother 

 Crane had seen the change in the condition of that soil, as I have, in the last 

 fifteen years, he would know there was something being done by those 

 green crops. When I first went there, if we didn't get to ploughing in the 

 spring in February right after the rains, the soil would get so hard sometimes 

 in April that we couldn't plough it till we had more rains. There are hundreds 

 of acres in the lands of the south that are never ploughed each spring, because 

 they get so hard they cannot plough them. But as we have been growing cow 

 peas on that land, it is loose and friable; we can break up that soil w^hether 

 it rains or not; it is in a loose and pliable condition, from the ploughing 

 under of apparent nothingness of cow peas. • 



I agree with the brother, you have got to plough early in the spring for 

 the best results in an orchard. Don't wait for cover crops to grow in the 

 spring. I would go right ahead whether the thing shows or not — and I 

 sometimes feel just as you do; but when I see the trees growing, see the way 

 the land holds moisture during a dry time, I know the Lord has been doing 

 something when I have been sleeping. 



Mr. Crane: I thought it was your heavy pruning. They will grow better 

 if you head them in. By severe heading I always got a big growth of tree; 

 and you have always followed that up, and so your trees will grow in spite 

 of anything when they are severely headed in every year. I noticed some- 

 thing kind of dead there ; I guess it was cow peas down on the ground, and 

 you hadn't begun ploughing yet; but it was about like our oats. 



Mr. Hale : You try oats and cow peas side by side, and in a year or two 

 the trees will tell you it has furnished something to your land. 



Mr. Crane: I never could get cow peas to grow. They would kill out in 

 August and would not grow. 



Mr. Hale: That statement about not getting cow peas to grow is butting 



