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We come now to the question of cover-crops for the or- 

 chard, by which is meant some crop grown in the orchard, 

 usually late in the season, and exclusively, or at least mainly, 

 with the object of improving the soil of the orchard. That 

 it can be made to play a very important part in the upbuild- 

 ing of an old orchard has been shown time and again. Some 

 of the best ones for Massachusetts orchards are buckwheat, 

 rye, soy beans, turnips, dwarf Essex rape and the vetches. 

 The chief advantages derived from their use would be that 

 they take plant food away from the trees in the autmnn and 

 thus help to ripen them up ; and they catch and hold nitrates 

 in the soil after the growth of the trees has stopped, and 

 when these substances would otherwise be washed out of the 

 soil ; that they help to pulverize and rot down the sod, which 

 is especially important at the beginning ; that when they are 

 plowed under they furnish humus, which in turn furnishes 

 plant food to the trees ; and that in the case of soy beans and 

 the vetches they help to keep up the store of nitrogen in the 

 soil by what they take up from the air and store in their 

 roots. This is by no means all that these cover-crops do, but 

 it covers the main points, and serves to show how important 

 they are. The general plan of their use would be this : that 

 the orchard would be plowed as early in the spring as the 

 soil would permit and thoroughly fitted as outlined earlier. 

 Then thorough cultivation would continue up to the middle 

 of July, when the cover-crop would be sown. The only im- 

 portant deviation from this course would be in the case of 

 some of the leguminous cover-crops mentioned, particularly 

 soy beans and cow peas, which often give better results if 

 sown in drills earlier in the season, the middle of June or 

 the first of July, and cultivate several times before the or- 

 chard is laid by. Of course, the objection to this is that the 

 cultivation by this method is much more costly, since it must 

 be done with a one-horse cultivator, a row at a time, instead 

 of with a disc or spring-tooth harrow, covering three or four 

 times the space. But even this objection is often, if not 

 usually, overbalanced by the much better growth of the cover- 

 crop. 



