lOG STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY 



CLOVER CROPS. 



BY PROF. W. W, TEACY OF DETROIT. 



When I proposed to talk about cover crops I thought I had a very easy 

 thing. I was going right to the station record and get all the information 

 I needed from those various bulletins which were available, and I was 

 coming here to do a big thing on somebody's else thunder; but I had 

 only just commenced on that work when I got so deep into the water, so 

 utterly lost, and so uncertain as to where I was in any respect, that I felt 

 in regard to getting assistance from those people of the experiment sta- 

 tion something like the old farmer did in "S^ermont who had a pair of young 

 steers that he wanted to break. One of them was comparatively quiet 

 and docile, but the other seemed to be mortally afraid of the yoke, and he 

 could not possibly get him to go along in it. He got the yoke on one 

 steer, but he could not get the other steer to put his head in. So, being 

 a man, he thought he could help the poor critter out by giving it an idea 

 of what he wanted done. He put his own head in and turned to the steer 

 and tried to call his attention. Well, the quiet steer took offense at this, 

 and started down the hill, and the old man sung out to his son as they 

 were going at a terrific gait, "Land sakes! stop us! we are running away!" 

 When they got to the bottom of the hill and his folk came and began to 

 rub arnica on him, he remarked to his son, "Well, that steer hadn't made 

 three jumps before I knew that I had made a very great mistake." That 

 is about the condition I was in regarding this question of cover crops 

 when I went to the experiment station bulletins. I realized that as for 

 pulling with them I w^as "not in it." But all the same, my friends, I be- 

 lieve the time is coming, and coming soon, when practical experience 

 and theoretical examination will pull together, and will take you off 

 from the bare ground which has made such hard sledding, and which I 

 believe is the cause of such hard sledding for many of our horticulturists. 



Cultivation has for its purpose the conserving, the development, of the 

 fertility of the soil, and its consequent productiveness. We cultivate in 

 order to develop and to conserve and bring out the fertility of the soil 

 on which we are operating. It comes out here every now and then — Mr. 

 Graham spoke of one orchard, and when he wanted specially to impress 

 it upon us that that orchard was in good condition, he said it was new 

 land. Almost any farmer in this state, if he had a choice between some 

 old land and some that was fresh from the forest, would prefer the new 

 land, or comparatively new land, on which to sow his crops. We go out 

 on the prairies of the west and find that people went there years ago, 

 when the prairie had been covered with grass hundreds of years and had 

 not been under cultivation at all, and they got amazing crops. So rich, 

 so fertile, were those lands that they thought they would never need any 

 fertilizing, that there was no need of anything being done in that respect, 

 but they began to cultivate grain and other products, and in a few years 

 they found their soil was being exhausted: that is, the cultivating of the 

 land, instead of enhancing its fertility, was gradually exhausting it. Is 

 there not a little misnomer in regard to our understanding of that? If 



