Choice of Cover Crops. 189 



The kinds of cover crops. It will now be asked 

 what is the best plant for cover and green manure. 

 It is hard to tell. Clover is a stand-by, but it 

 often fails to "catch" late in the season, and it 

 should stand on the land an entire season in order 

 to obtain its full value. Upon good and well- 

 tilled lands and in favorable seasons, considerable 

 herbage can be obtained for turning under in the 

 spring if it is sown the preceding August or Sep- 

 tember ; but in general it is unreliable as an annual 

 crop, and is not adapted to fruit lands. 



It should be said at the outset that the choice 

 of the proper crop for the covering of an orchard 

 is a local matter, the same as the determination of 

 the method of tillage or the kind of fertilizer is. 

 There is also no one cover crop which is best for all 

 purposes and all conditions. The grower must 

 study the condition of his trees and his land, and 

 then judge as best he may what course he shall pur- 

 sue. Nature's cover crops, at least upon farms, are 

 weeds, and these may be useful if allowed to grow 

 in the fall after the tillage is completed. The 

 difficulty is that they cannot always be relied upon to 

 cover the land at the time when they are wanted, 

 most of them do not live through the winter, and 

 they are very likely to become a serious nuisance. 

 It is best, therefore, to substitute some other plant 

 for the weeds. In approaching the question of the 

 choice of cover crops, the grower must remember that 

 there are two great classes in respect to their 

 power to gather nitrogen. The one class is non- 



