The winter cover crop-spring maize rotation system is a new agricultural mode in decreasing the area of barefarmland and its environmental impact due to the decrease of winter wheat in the north China Plain.However，the effectsof incorporation of cover crops on cropyield，soil nutrients and microbial properties in the succeeding spring maize growingseason in the north China Plain are rarely studied.The four treatments，maize -bare farmland(WFM)，maize -hairyvetch(VrM)，maize -FebruaryOrchid(OvM)and maize -winterrape(BcM)were designed to investigate the effects of incorporation of winter cover crops on the soil physicochemical and microbiological properties and maize growth in the northChinaPlain.The results showed that incorporation of winter cover crops increased maize yield and nutrients uptake byplant.Compared with theWFM，the straw and grain yield were the highest inOvM，increased by 33.3% and 35.5% significantly (P<0.05)，and the uptake of nitrogen，phosphorus and potassium by upper parts and phosphorus by underground partsof plant were significantly increased inBcM( P<0.05)，by30.7%，74.7%，57.6% and171.4%，respectively.Thesoil organicmatter，alkalinenitrogen，availablephosphorus，availablepotassium，total nitrogen and total potassium content in 0~10 cm and 10～20 cm soil layers were increased significantly under the cover croptreatments( P<0.05).Additionally，soil NH 4+-N and NO^3--N contents in young maize period were significantly reduced by 0.50～ 3.52 mg·kg-1and 21.40～ 33.13 mg·kg -1，respectively.The incorporation of cover crops also increased theSMBC，SMBN and SMBPcontents significantly compared with treatment without cover crop at different growth stages ofmaize( P<0.05).The maize -winter rapeseed rotation and maize-February orchid rotation were appropriate models in the north China Plain，takingconsideration of maize yield and soil physicochemical properties and microbialcontent.