■358 STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



Philadelphia, I could flood the whole country with crops, but we can not 

 .get it; still, we put it on after the fall crops and get all we can of it. I do 

 aiot think rye is of very much value as a manurial crop, but it holds some 

 of the properties that would otherwise escape. 



Mr. Perkins: I would like to ask Prof. Tracy what experience he has 

 had with cow peas. 



Prof. Tracy : On the farm in Detroit I have had some experience with 

 ■peas, but never with any success. The only success I ever had with them 

 was on a farm in Grand Traverse count}", which would seem to be too far 

 north to succeed with them, but I succeeded quite well with them there; 

 we have not succeeded in Detroit aiid in southern Michigan. We will 

 never use them there at all; we have abandoned using them altogether. 



Mr. Harrison: I can not say that we have had much experience with 

 cow peas, but we put in twenty-five acres this year and we got an excel- 

 lent growth, ver}^ large indeed, so much so that we had to put on a 

 revolving cutter to cut the vines to get them under. Our land appears 

 as though it would be in excellent condition for spring planting. Of 

 course, if we take the reports from the experiment station, we have 

 gathered a vast amount of nitrogen from the atmosphere that rye does not 

 gather, rye not being a nitrogenous plant. We sowed them in the latter 

 part of May, as early as we could get the ground plowed, and we turned 

 them under just about the time they were commencing to ripen. We 

 turned them under in the latter part of September. 



A Member : The ground was surrendered to them for one year, for the 

 ■purpose of building it up? 



Mr. Harrison: Entirely so. 



Mr. Hale: In considering the value of cow peas as a crop for green 

 manure, I believe it is the most valuable summer plant that we have, 

 and quite far north, but it must be considered that it is semi-tropical in 

 its nature, and a tender plant, and will thrive just about with Indian 

 corn. You can plant it about the same time that it is safe to plant Indian 

 corn, 'and it will be killed by about the same kind of frost that will 

 injure the corn, so it must be grown during the mid-summer months. 

 If you have abundant acreage and can spare your land for a year with 

 cow peas, you can probably grow more forage and more substance for 

 green manuring, filling your ground with a great deal of organic matter, 

 and at the same time gather more nitrogen, than jou can gather in any 

 other way in the same season ; but whether you should grow cow peas or 

 clover depends upon whether you can spare the land. With us in Con- 

 necticut, with much the same climatic conditions as Michigan, and south, 

 the minute the picking of strawberries is done we turn the ground over 

 and sow the entire acreage with cow peas and get an enormous growth, 

 three or three and a half feet in height, and just a mass of leaves. We 

 get this growth to plow under, as Mr. Harrison says, in the fall, and we 

 sometimes roll it down with a cutaway harrow and sow rye to hold the 

 nitrogen that has already been gathered. 



Mr. Riehl : Speaking of the cow pea, I want to add that with us we find 

 the cow pea a very valuable plant, and it is coming into use more and 

 more. My own experience the past year has demonstrated one thing that 

 surprises me. I had an orchard that I could not well cultivate, a peach 

 orchard. I sowed it about the first of June with cow peas and allowed 



