362 State Horticultural Society. 



that three short years could bring small switches to large bearing trees, 

 twelve and fourteen feet tall and as broad in proportion. 



The sight is worth going to Texas to see. It demonstrates what in- 

 tense cultivation can do, and how much it pays to do it well. 



On our large commercial orchards in Southwest Missouri we plant 

 largely of cow peas. Have planted some years as much as four hun- 

 dred bushels. We consider cow peas and clover next to corn, and should 

 be taken in rotation with corn in light soils that need humus, such as we 

 find in large portions of South Missouri, Illinois and parts of Arkansas, 

 but our experience with North Missouri soil showed that corn and 

 clover were the best rotary crops on a commercial scale. 



In sowing cow peas and clover among young trees we have always 

 cultivated a strip four or five feet wide on each side of the tree row. 



The very best plan to adopt in our hilly, rocky country on the 

 Ozarks seems to be a very puzzling question. The rocks we cannot 

 pulverize with our harrows and cultivator, and heavy rains wash our 

 loose soil away from the rocks we stir loose. So while considering the 

 welfare of the trees as to cultivation, we must try and retain all the soil 

 and keep adding humus to the soil. One good way to accomplish i:his 

 is to seed every alternate middle to clover, or sow to cow peas, parallel 

 with the slope of the ground, and cultivate the rest thoroughly. The 

 wash of the cultivated middles will be held by the middles that are seeded. 

 If sowing cow peas, reverse the middles every other year; if seeded to 

 clover, reverse every two years. By this way the trees will have good 

 cultivation and the soil become richer each year. Cow peas as a rule 

 will make from one to two tons of good hay per acre. One drawback 

 to cow peas is the expense of seeding each year, as the seed comes high 

 as a rule, and picking it by hand is expensive, and we have had hard 

 time getting it picked at all. 



A very good plan of rotary crop in orchard is worked out suc- 

 cessfullv here in South Missouri by fencing ofT orchards in fields of 

 40 acres each, seeding them to clover, cow peas, rye and wheat, in dif- 

 ferent fields, and instead of cutting the crop, turn hogs in at harvesting 

 time and let them do the work. To be sure, there is some of it wasted, 

 but the hogs stir the ground quite a little and the surplus straw makes 

 good mulch, so with the turning of the ground at seeding time, the 

 mulch of the straw and the rooting of the hogs, the ground is stirred 

 quite a little at little expense. 



By moving the hogs from field to field they do the orchard little 

 damage ; the profit from the hogs pays the expense of putting in the crops 



