se to
cover-crops in yield of fruit or growth of vine.[9] There seem to be
no other experiments to confirm the results at the New York Station,
and grape-growers nowhere have used cover-crops very generally for the
betterment of their vineyards. There is doubt, therefore, as to
whether grapes will respond profitably to the annual use of
cover-crops in yield of fruit, which, of course, is the ultimate test
of the value of cover-crops, but a test hard to apply unless the
experiment runs a great number of years.

Leaving out the doubtful value of cover-crops in increasing the supply
of plant-food and thereby producing an increase in yield, there are at
least three ways in which cover-crops are valuable in the vineyard.
Thus, it is patent to all who have tried cover-crops in the vineyard
that the land is in much better tilth and more easily worked when some
green crop is turned under in fall or spring; it is not unreasonable
to assume, though it is impossible to secure reliable experimental
data to confirm the belief, that cover-crops protect the roots of
grapes from winter-killing; certainly it may be expected that a
cover-crop sowed in midsummer will cause grapes to mature their wood
earlier and more thoroughly so that the vines go into the winter in
better condition. The only objection to be raised against cover-crops
in the vineyard is that pickers, mostly women, object to the
cover-crop when wet with rain or dew and usually choose to pick in
vineyards having no such crop. This seemingly insignificant factor
often gives the grape-grower who sows cover-crops much trouble in
harvest time.

Several cover-crops may be planted in vineyards as clover, vetch,
oats, barley, cow-horn turnip, rape, rye and buckwheat. Combinations
of these usually make the seed too costly or the trouble of sowing too
great. Yet some combinations of a leguminous and non-leguminous crop
would seem to make the best green crop for the grape. Thus, a bushel
of oats or barley plus ten pounds of clover or twenty pounds of winter
vetch, a combination often used in orchards, should prove satisfactory
in the vineyard. Or, doubling the amount of seed for each, these crops
could be alternated, with a change in the rotation every four or six
years, with cow-horn turnip or rape. Turnip and rape require at least
three pounds of seed to the acre.

The cover-crop is sown in midsummer, about the first of August in
northern latitudes, and should be plowed under