PROCEEDINGS OF THE ANNUAL MEETING. 285 



acres of oats and they stand up from six inches to a foot high now. They 

 hold the snow and leaves, and especially on clay ground it loosens it 

 up. You do not have any baked ground the next year when you cul- 

 tivate it. 



The President: Does it prevent the ground from washing any? 



Mr. Shriver: It keeps the ground from washing and the snow from 

 going away. It holds the leaves, and in picking the fruit in the fall it 

 does not seem to hurt oats to tramp over them. This fall we sowed all 

 our ground with oats; it costs about seventy-five cents per acre. We 

 have a thick growth. This year it has been a much larger growth than 

 we had other years, on account of so much rain this summer; they got a 

 better start. We like it. 



Mr. Hale: There is just one point I wish these gentlemen would tell 

 us, and that is, what advantage crops of this kind have over the crops 

 that do gather nitrogen? What advantage do oats or rye have over the 

 clovers? 



Mr. Shriver: I would say for the oats, they hold the snow, keep the 

 ground from washing, keep the soil moist, and then in the spring the 

 ground is mellow and nice for working; while, if you take clover, you 

 can not get any such size in that time, and have to take a year or more. 

 Rye you can not get large enough in the fall, and then, as Mr. Morrill 

 says, we can not get rid of it in the spring in time to give the most good. 

 Oats die down in the winter, and in the spring you can even take a disc 

 harrow and go over them, and you have the ground in good condition, 

 or you may use a shovel-plow. I have tried it three years in my pear 

 orchard, on a piece of clay which used to be one of the hardest pieces of 

 ground in the neighborhood, and now it is one of the mellowest pieces 

 of ground, as nice as any sandy soil we have. 



Professor Craig: It seems to me that the Michigan fruitgrowers are 

 in very happy condition; they are going to apply Canada wood ashes 

 and grow oats on peach ground, and their trees do not need any nitro- 

 gen. I have no experience that extends over more than three or four 

 years. Now, I would not have you forget that a day of retribution may 

 come, and that if you are constantly taking nitrogen out of your soil 

 and not growing anything to put it back into it, there may be a day of 

 reckoning. You may find that oats is a good cover-crop, but I would 

 strongly advise you not to tie yourself down to oats, and possibly not to 

 clover, entirely; but if you find it desirable, then alternate the two — put 

 oats in one year and clover another year, or mix them, as Professor Taft 

 has suggested; but you certainly can not get along without having a 

 certain amount of nitrogen in your soil. I do not think there is any 

 soil, even Manitoba soil, which we boast about a good deal, that is rich 

 enough in that constituent to stand continuous cropping without return- 

 ing nitrogen in some way, I may say that our Ontario growers find it 

 necessary to sow clover about the first of August. Their season is two 

 or three weeks later than ours at Ottawa, and they find it desirable to sow 

 clover the first of August, or some other crop at that time, in order to take 

 up the extra moisture in the soil, so that the tree may ripen its wood 

 perfectly. I refer particularly to the peach. Your conditions may be 

 so different here as not to call for that kind of treatment. 



