116 COVER CROPS 



makes a fine covering for the land over winter. When spring 

 comes it has another shortcoming from the point of view of the 

 orchard and that is that it stalks up very quickly and may get 

 too tall and coarse to plow under well. It will also, on heavy 

 land, dry out the soil very quickly and make trouble with lumps 

 when the land is plowed. But it is fine to prevent washing of 

 the soil, is reasonably cheap, furnishes a good supply of humus, 

 and takes care of all soluble plant food, so that it can not be 

 spared from the list. 



Crimson Clover. When this plant will make a good growth 

 in the autumn it comes the nearest to the ideal of a cover crop 

 of any plant in the list. It is reasonably cheap, and fulfils 

 nearly all of the offices detailed at the beginning of this chapter 

 as belonging to the ideal cover crop. It does not succeed in all 

 climates and it very 'frequently makes a poor growth for the 

 first year or two that it is tried on a particular block of land. 

 But if the owner will persist in his efforts to grow it, it will 

 often improve year by year until it makes a splendid growth. 

 Another difficulty with it is that it will not grow on poor soil. 

 The orchard must be in " good heart " before it is worth while 

 to try any of the clovers (Fig. 44). 



Mammoth Red and Common Red Clover. Many good 

 orchardists do not have much use for these plants as cover crops 

 where the land is being cultivated every year, as is usually the 

 case in orchards conducted on the cultivation plan. They seldom 

 make any growth worth while the first autumn and therefore to 

 get enough humus they must be allowed to grow in the spring, 

 which, as already explained, is very objectionable. Occasionally, 

 however, when an orchard gets to growing too much wood and the 

 owner wants to sober it down by seeding down the land and 

 letting it stand for two or three years, the clovers are particu- 

 larly good to mix with the grass seed that is used. This is where 

 these clovers shine, in "semi-permanent seeding." 



The Vetches. Both summer and winter vetches are splendid 

 crops for covers and if the seed did not cost so much they would 

 be just about perfect. But the seed does cost; and until some 

 method is devised to bring down the cost to about one-quarter 



