The cover-crop follows the last cultivation. There is a growing suspicion in the State that the value of cover-crops in orchards has been magnified. Comparative tests do not show that trees or small-fruits respond to cover-cropping to as great an extent as from theory one might expect them to do. Thus, in several experiments being conducted by this Station, apples and grapes give no very appreciable response to the various cover-crops--at least pay but doubtfully for the expense of seed and seeding. While there are no very satisfactory experiments to confirm the assumption, it would seem, however, that the peach of all fruits would be most benefitted by cover-crops. It is patent to all who have had orchard-experience that land is in better tilth when some green crop is turned under in fall or spring; so, too, all know that a cover-crop sowed in mid-summer causes the peach to mature its wood and thus go into the winter in better condition; 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 peaches from winter-killing. Leaving out, then, the doubtful value of the cover-crop in furnishing plant-food to the peach, at least three sufficient reasons make it a necessary adjunct of a peach-orchard. Several cover-crops are now in general use in the peach-orchards of New York, in order of frequency of use about as follows: Clover, vetch, oats, barley, cow-horn turnip, rape, rye, buckwheat. Combination cover-crops are less popular than formerly, cost of seed being the deterrent. Yet many years of experience at this Station and wide observation in the State, unsubstantiated, however, by any experimental work, lead to the conclusion that some combination of a leguminous and a non-leguminous crop makes the most satisfactory cover-crop for the peach. A half-bushel of oats or barley plus twenty pounds of winter vetch or twelve pounds of red clover is possibly the most satisfactory of all cover-crops for this fruit in New York. Occasionally a change from oats to barley, and clover to vetch should be made and once in four or five years rape or cow-horn turnip should be worked into the rotation.