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 than sod. The danger is that the fruit- 
grower will continue the cropping too long, and 
expect 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. 
