No. 6. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 481 



warm weather follows. This is of particular importance where they 

 are seeded for forage or hay, as very often crops are failures because 

 the seeding was so early as to cause the weather to injure the plant, 

 and thus prevent its early growth. Neither should they be seeded 

 later than two months before the average date of frost, as the 

 first heavy frost will destroy the young plants and no variety that 

 is now known will reach a satisfactory stage of growth for any pur- 

 pose inside of this period. For forage and for green manure the 

 crop may be sown broadcast at the rate of from one to one and one- 

 half bushels per acre, or may be drilled in with an ordinary grain 

 drill. If the seeding is not made too early, broadcast methods are 

 very satisfactory. If, however, the early growth of the plant is 

 retarded then weeds obtain a foothold and it is likely to be choked 

 out. 



Where the object of growing the crop is for seed, then planting 

 should be preferably in drills, from two to three feet apart, or a little 

 closer than for corn, and the amount of seed may be reduced to 

 three pecks per acre. Seed should be covered from one to two 

 inches deep and on very light soils a little deeper. The season to 

 some extent governs the depth at which seed should be planted — in 

 a dry season the deeper the seed the better. The difficulty in late 

 summer seeding is that crab-grass is liable to choke out the plants. 



There is perhaps no other crop that is so generally useful for 

 soil improvement as the cow pea. In the first place it grows during 

 the hot summer, when it is desirable to have the ground covered 

 and its long tap-root penetrates into the subsoil, loosening it and 

 making it more porous; and in the second place, the absorption and 

 assimilation of the free nitrogen in the air by this crop, which is 

 characteristic of all the legumes, makes it one of great service, 

 even when the crop is used for forage and only the roots and stubble 

 are left as additions to the soil. 



In using the cow pea it may be plowed under while green, or may 

 be left on the surface as a mulch during the winter, and plowed 

 under in the spring. It may be partially grazed and the stubble 

 and roots plowed under, and in any case the improvement of the 

 soil is very marked. Where the forage can be used to advantage 

 and the object is to gradually improve the soil, then the better plan 

 is to remove it either for use as green forage or for hay, as on good 

 soils the stubble and roots left will furnish sufficient nitrogen to 

 supply the early needs of a cereal crop. On light soils it is also de- 

 sirable to remove part of the growth, as the turning under of a too 

 heavy crop of cow peas would be likely to injure rather than to im- 

 prove the physical character of the soil. The danger from plowing 

 under heavy crops of green manure is not so marked in the north as 



31— 6-— 1902 



