FAIRLY SATISFACTORY CROPS 73 



fine results. They need good land and good cultivation, which 

 help out the orchard trees. One difficulty mth them which 

 ought to be guarded against by the orchard owner is the fact 

 that they usually require a good deal of barn manure and other 

 forms of nitrogen, and it is a very easy matter to get the land too 

 rich for the best interest of the young trees. It would probably 

 be better not to use them year after year in the same block of 

 orchard but to practise rotation of crops, following truck crops 

 with squash and this with beans. 



7. Corn. — There is some prejudice against corn, and perhaps 

 rightly, because it is a rank feeder and is likely to get more than 

 its share of food and moisture ; also because its great height tends 

 to shade the young trees. But if it is not grown too close to the 

 trees and if the rows are run north and south so that the sun can 

 get at the trees when its power is greatest, the objections will 

 usually be overcome, and the writer knows from experience that 

 it may work out satisfactorily. It is a crop that is usually profit- 

 able. If the farm is an orchard proposition pure and simple, the 

 grain from corn can be fed to teams on the place and even the fod- 

 der may be used in this way in winter, if there is no winter work 

 for the teams. Probably it would be better to restrict this crop 

 to popcorn or to flint varieties which do not make tall stalks, and 

 it is perhaps better not to grow corn after the third year of the 

 orchard, though there are many exceptions to these suggestions. 



8. Buckwheat. — This is really a combination cover crop and 

 companion crop, but is included here because it is a reasonably 

 satisfactory money crop to be grown in the orchard. Of course, 

 in order to get the money out of it one has to cut the crop and 

 remove it from the orchard, which is strictly against the rules 

 for a cover crop. But that is something the grower has to learn 

 to do *' when necessary," if he is going to run an orchard. The 

 difficult thing to learn is when it is necessary. 



Fairly Satisfactory Crops.^9. Currants and Gooseberries, 

 if the bushes are set in rows both w^ays to allow for cultivation, 

 are often quite satisfactory. The fact that they are perennial 

 and that they make their growth each season at exactly the same 

 time as the orchard is the chief objection to them. But they re- 



