Crops for Fruit Plantations. 171 



In general, it may be said that only those crops 

 are allowable in a fruit plantation which demand 

 such treatment as to improve the land for the fruit 

 plants. The growing of light crops is a means of 

 keeping the land stirred when it might otherwise be 

 neglected ; and if the grower is careful to see that 

 the physical condition of the land is improved, and 

 adds enough plant -food to supply the loss, the light 

 Cropping of orchards for the first few years may be 

 a decided benefit. At all events, cultivated crops 

 are better fhan sod. The danger is that the fruit- 

 grower will continue the cropping too long, and 

 i xpect too much from it. In an orchard, the crops 

 ought to pay for taking care of the land until the 

 trees come into bearing. Strawberries and the bush 

 fruits may be advantageously set in alternate rows 

 with beans or potatoes, and the same tillage is re- 

 quired for each crop. 



Only annual crops should be grown in fruit plan- 

 tations. The growing of nursery stock in orchards 

 a frequent practice in parts of the north should 

 be discouraged.* This crop makes essentially the 

 same demands upon the land as the orchard itself, 

 and it does not allow of those variations in culti- 

 vation and management which may be essential to 

 the varying seasons. It may be true that enough 

 fertilizer can be placed upon the land to replace the 

 loss of plant -food, but it is rarely done ; and, more 

 than this, the nursery stock drinks up the moisture 



*The double-planting of fruit lands the mixing of different kinds of fruits 

 -is discussed in Chapter V, 



