No. l.] RKNOVATING OLD ORCHARDS. 413 



moivly suj;;gcsled as (ho usual ones applied, and it should he home in 

 mind that there is little danf>;er in applying an over-dose of either 

 potash or phosphoric acid, as neither one leaches out of the soil to any 

 extent, nor does either one, wheji present in moderate excess in the 

 soil, produce the injurious elTect on the orchard that an over-sujiply 

 of nitrogen does. They should be applied as early in the spring as 

 possible, and worked into the soil as much as is possible with the 

 method of culture adopted. 



We come now to the question of cover-crops for the orchard, 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 improv- 

 ing the soil of the orchard. That it can be made to play a very im- 

 portant part in the upbuilding of an old orchard has been shown time 

 and again. Some of the best ones for Massachusetts orchards are 

 buckwheat, rye, soy beans, cow peas and the vetches. The chief 

 advantages derived from their use would be that they take plant food 

 away from the trees in the autumn and thus help to ripen them up; 

 that 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, cow peas 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 j^lowed 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 -Tul}', when the cover-crop would be sown. The only important 

 deviation from this course would be in the case of some of the legumi- 

 nous cover-crops mentioned, particularly soy beans and cow peas, 

 which often give better results if sown in drills earUer in the season, 

 the last of June or the first of July, and cultivated several times before 

 the orchard 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 ol>jection is often, if not usually, overbalanced by the much 

 better growth of the cover-crop. 



After cultivation ceases and the cover-crop is sown nothing further 

 is done to the soil until the following spring, when the cover-crop is 

 plowed under, and the programme begins again. Where a good 

 growth of one of the nitrogenous co\er-crops can be secured it is often 

 possible to obtain all the nitrogen neodod for the orchard in this way. 



I should feel inclined to begin with buckwheat as a cover-crop in 



