iv.] PLANTING FRUIT TREES IN GRASS LAND 123 



vetches, trifolium, or rye, are sown in time to make a 

 start while the land is warm, and to be either cut green 

 or fed off before the land is wanted for turnips in the 

 following spring. The advantages of the practice are 

 that the summer-formed nitrates in the stubble-ground 

 are saved from washing out, and that a valuable bite of 

 early fodder is obtained : with the leguminous crops also, 

 the farm is enriched by the nitrogen gathered from the 

 atmosphere. The difficulty of getting catch crops lies 

 in the fact that the stubble ground is left very dry by 

 the preceding crop, so that a timely rainfall is needed to 

 obtain a plant. The danger of their use is that they 

 may so deplete the available soil water as to give the 

 succeeding crop of roots a very poor chance of germin- 

 ating or growing well. In America the practice has been 

 suggested of sowing some leguminous crop like clover 

 in the tillage orchards about the end of July, so that the 

 new surface crop should so dry the ground as to forward 

 the ripening of the apples on the trees ; again, any 

 second growth of the trees due to a late summer rainfall 

 would be prevented, this moisture being dealt with by 

 the catch crop. 



The second illustration worthy of notice is that fruit 

 trees when newly planted in grass land often make a 

 very poor growth for a year or two. This is because a 

 fruit tree when planted is but indifferently supplied with 

 water-collecting roots ; inevitably they are few in number 

 and have a very restricted range. Hence they must be 

 in a soil well supplied with moisture if they are to provide 

 the tree with the necessary water, and they are very ill 

 fitted to compete with a crowd of fibrous grass roots 

 surrounding them, should the season turn out dry. In 

 one experiment the moisture in the top foot of a 

 pasture was found to be only half that present in the top 

 foot of neighbouring uncropped land. 



