STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. I29 



tremely low. As a matter of fact the hairy vetch is an ideal 

 cover for an orchard. The soil under the vetch will often be 

 almost too wet to plow, when under alsike, right beside it, it 

 will be in a dry condition. We have plowed crosswise and 

 otherwise to see. The difference was so great that you could 

 show the sharp break on a photograph. Alsike and rye are both 

 severe in their moisture draught, and that is what you don't 

 want as a cover in an orchard. The advantages of the vetch are 

 a slight moisture draught, a sprawling habit of growth so that 

 it covers the ground and checks evaporation from the soil, and 

 the fact that it is a nitrogen gatherer. You have got everything 

 in that plant, but with this defect, that it frequently winter-kills 

 with us. I believe if you have a sprinkling of rye in combina- 

 tion with the vetch that it will winter-kill much less than if you 

 attempt to grow the vetch alone. We are growing it alone in 

 the present experiment because we want to see what its effect is. 



Ques. Are these crops all used alike as a mulch? 



Prof. Stewart : The alfalfa is the only one used as a mulch. 

 These others are tilled and seeded at the proper season of the 

 year. The cow peas and the soy beans are slight in their influ- 

 ence on tree growth. They grow a beautiful cover crop if we 

 look at them from the view point of the crop. The plants look 

 fine. But in their influence on the tree they are way down in 

 rank. The reason for that I figure as this : These two plants 

 have to be sown early, about the 25th of June, so that the tillage 

 season is short. They then come up and begin drawing moist- 

 ure from the soil, thus checking the growth of the trees, with 

 the result that the trees on those plots are considerably smaller 

 than those in the other cases. I think it is because of their 

 vigorous growth, coupled with the fact that we have to sow the 

 seed so early, that they don't give us the effects that we expect. 



If a person attempts to use a permanent cover it does not 

 mean that he should exclude tillage entirely. He is not abso- 

 lutely confined to excluding tillage from an orchard, and if he 

 finds, for example, that he can get along better by putting the 

 disc or something into his orchard along in mid season to stir 

 things up and get a new start for his cover, why so much the 

 better. I know one man in Virginia who is maintaining vetch 

 as a permanent cover. He simply lets it grow along until mid 



