PROCEEDINGS OF THE ANNUAL MEETING 171 



Mr. Kellogg: President Morrill explained that leaf-curl bad something 

 to do with the measure of growth in peach trees. 



Prof. Tracv: I know, in this case. 



Mr. Kellogg: The general development of the tree was all right. 



Prof. Tracv: I am not criticizing that, 1 am only bringing up the ques- 

 tion of whether putting our trees under such high pressure is conducive 

 to long life. 



Mr. Kellogg: There is one thing to which Mr. Tracy has called atten- 

 tion, to which I wish to give a little emphasis. I last year had the most 

 magnificent grow^th of cow-peas I ever saw. We began plowing in 

 August. We took the team off a few weeks and did not plow any more 

 until the peas were all killed by frost, and I got great results. I sowed 

 fifty-five acres of cow-peas this fall, but on account of the excessive 

 drouth (w^e could not irrigate there) they did not make a large growth. 

 I plow'ed them under very shallow, thinking perhaps the manure we 

 were to apply would sta}' on top better; but my cow-peas, where they 

 are heav}-, will always stay until spring. It is the liumus I am after in 

 cow-peas, as w'ell as nitrogen. I get the seed from the south. 



Prof. Tracy: I forgot to mention peas in my list of plants. I have 

 never used cow-peas, but we do use common peas. As to the variety, we 

 simply use any seed which we have left over. 



Prof. Beal: When we get seeds from the south, the names are very 

 unreliable; we are likely to get almost anything. I find they are very 

 variable, and this year, at the Agricultural college, those covering the 

 ground made a good growth and fruited freely. A few^ years ago I had 

 some early sort, the name I am now unable to tell, which seeded still more 

 abundantly. I think we will have no trouble in raising cow'-peas that 

 will mature seeds in many parts of Michigan. 



Mr. Morrill : I would like to ask if we can quit cultivation in a peach 

 orchard as late as the loth of August, and get any growth of consequence 

 out of these same cow-peas? 



Mr. Kellogg: Kot very well. 



Prof. Beal: Thev do not stand frost verv well. 



Mr. Fifield: We had an illustration last vear of using oats as a cover 

 crop, and it worked so nicely on our land that I will give it to you. A 

 part of our soil is quite heavy, and we have a plum orchard of Ibetween 

 seven and eight thousand trees on this heavy soil, as well as our peach 

 orchards running from the heavy soil up over the highlands on light soil, 

 and we sowed oats among these trees for a cover crop and they did well. 



Mr. Morrill: About what time did you sow? 



Mr. Fifield : About the 1st of September. In the winter, I think it was 

 toward the latter part of January, I w-as over the farm, and in places 

 where the snow had blown off a little, over the ridges and in other ]tlaces, 

 by digging down we could get some of the oats, and I took some back to 

 the office — green heads of oats, showing the condition they were in there 

 in midwinter. This summer, in cultivating the orchards, we found that 

 the land which heretofore had been hard to work, that was always lumpy 

 and hard (stiff, heavy landj, worked as mealy and as nice and smooth as 

 other land that was lighter, showing that the cover crop had helped it in 

 the matter of cultivation; and we could see the change easilv bv work- 

 ing in adjoining fields where we had not sown the oats. It was the 

 same kind of soil, just as good heretofore as this soil where we had sown 



