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MASS. EXPERIMENT STATION BULLETIN 318 



COVER CROPS IN ONION CULTURE 



In the culture of tobacco in the Connecticut Valley it is a rather common 

 practice to make use of cover crops, and naturally the question of cover crops in 

 onion culture has arisen from time to time. Tobacco culture and onion culture 

 are quite different in most respects, but on account of the distribution of their 

 labor requirements, a certain similarity in soil requirements, and a peculiar com- 

 bination of economic and human factors existing in the Connecticut Valley, the 

 two crops are grown in close proximity and almost exclusively of other crops. 



Figure 3. Water erosion of soil is not a serious problem on typical cnion land of the Connecti- 

 cut Valley, but occasionally it occurs, as shown by the above photograph. 



Tobacco is usually harvested from about the middle of August to the first of 

 September, the crop is removed, and it is an easy matter to sow a cover crop 

 immediately. Seed onions are pulled from about the first to the middle of Septem- 

 ber, and are then allowed to cure in windrows for a month or six weeks before they 

 are topped, sorted, and bagged. All operations are done in the field, and the 

 bagged onions are left there some time before storing or marketing. Thus there 

 is a practical difficulty in the way of growing cover crops in onion fields. This 

 is less, however, with set than with seed onions because the former are harvested 

 a month or so earlier, and are often marketed in time to grow a cover crop. 



During the period 1926-1929 experiments were conducted with the following 

 cover crops sown in seed onions: rye, timothy, redtop, crimson clover, and red 

 clover. In addition, biennial sweet clover was tried one year, but it did so poorly 

 that it was not tried again. These crops were sown immediately after a shove- 

 hoeing about the last week of July. If the soil was rather dry and dry weather 

 prevalent, the seed was worked into the soil by a second light shove-hoeing. 

 Grass and clover seed were sown at the rate of about 40 pounds 1 , and rye at 2 



Mn practice this amount of seed could be reduced one-fourth to one-half. 



