268 



THE GENESEE FARMER. 



per acre. It grows with great rapidity, and two 

 or three crops may be obtained in a season. Spurry 

 and the white hipine are both annuals. We thinli 

 spurry would prove a most valuable crop for sow- 

 ing in peach orchards to be plowed in as a manure. 

 Tlie objection to growing clover as a green manure 

 in peach orchards, is that the clover robs the trees 

 of moisture during the months of May, June and 

 July, when they are most liable to suffer from 

 drouth and lack of plant-food. If the peach orch- 

 ard was kept in bare fallow till the first of July, 

 and cultivated su|;iciently to keep down the weeds, 

 the trees would obtain the greatest supply of mois- 

 ture and plant food at the time when they are most 

 required. Then, by sowing the spurry_ about the 

 middle of July, the plants would cover the ground 

 by the time the peaches were ready to gather ; and 

 its subsequent growth would render tlie ground 

 drier by evaporating moisture through their leaves, 

 and serve to check excessive growth in peach trees, 

 and thus cause them to ripen up their wood better 

 — an object exceedingly desirable in itself; but this 

 is not all : The spurry would grow late in the fall, 

 cover the ground all winter, and when plowed un- 

 der early in the spring would furnish a large quan- 

 tity of manure for the use of the growing trees. 

 Let spurry be tried for this purpose. "We have 

 seen it stated that in some trials in Georgia, the 

 lupiue and spurry were destroyed by insects; but 

 this may have been an exceptional case. They do 

 ■well in Europe, and there is no reason why they 

 should not do equr.lly well in some sections of this 

 country. 



TuE New Lawn Gkass {Spergula lulifero^^ of 

 which so much has been lately said in the English 

 journals, is a species ot spurry. There seems to 

 be little doubt that on heavy clay lands it will prove 

 a very useful lawn grass, requiring no mowing and 

 little other care except an occasional sweeping. 

 Experiments are now in progress here to test its 

 merits. 



MEDICAGO LUPULINA. 



Medioago LUPULINA is another leguminous plant, 

 a fibrous-rooted perennial, very common in dry 

 pastures, especially if of good loamy quality, where 



it forms, with other plants, a thick sward. The 

 pods are short, black, twisted, and an-ayed in ob- 

 long heads, as shown in the annexed engraving. 

 It is not equal in nutritious qualities, perhaps, to 

 red clover, but is valuable on dry, poor soils, where^ 

 however, it is apt to run out in a few years. 



bikd's-foot trefoil. 



Bied's-Foot Trefoil {Lotus corniculatus) is a 

 prostrate perennial, common on open grassy pas- 

 tures and dry places. It is a leguminous plant, 

 equally nutritious as clover, and is instantly eaten 

 down whenever cattle have access to it. It is one 

 of the commonly cultivated "artificial grasses" of 

 England, and is always recommended as worthy a 

 place in all mixtures for permanent pastures, and 

 especially for lawns, orchards, aud shady jjlaces. 



Lucerne {Medicago sativa). — This is a well- 

 known plant, which has been more or less cultiva- 

 ted in this country for 

 many years. It requires 

 very ricli land, and deep 

 and thorough cultivation. 

 It should be planted in 

 rows, and hand-hoed or 

 forked between, several 

 times during the first 

 and second years. It 

 does not attain its maxi- 

 mum productiveness till 

 the third year. On these 

 accounts, it is not likely 

 to be very generally in- 

 troduced into a country 

 where land is cheap and labor dear. In the neigh- 



