14 The Bulletin. 



can pick out and discard any that have low vitality, whereas this could 

 not be done if all the ears were shelled together. 



FERTILIZATION. 



The corn crop is a gross feeder. You cannot make the land too rich 

 for corn. The high individual acre yields that have been produced in 

 the South in recent years have been grown on rich land — land heavily 

 loaded with some form of organic matter to which varying amounts of 

 certain available commercial fertilizers were added. 



All the corn soils of the State, except the black, mucky soils of the 

 far east and the very limited area of bottom-lands along the principal 

 streams, are in need of organic matter as a basis of economical fertili- 

 zation. It is but a shortsighted policy that puts large amounts of com- 

 mercial fertilizer under the corn crop when the soil is bleached for lack 

 of humus. It must always be borne in mind that large amounts of 

 some cheap and easily obtained organic matter lies at the very founda- 

 tion of successful corn growing in North Carolina. Some few of our 

 lands are well supplied, and this supply must be kept up; but the vast 

 majority of them do not have more than a tenth as much as normal 

 crop requirements demand, and to these nine times the present amount 

 must be added. 



But where shall we get the needed organic matter for these soils? 

 Ask the average farmer in the South, and he will at once say, "Feed 

 stock and get stable manure for the soil." Ask him if he has done this, 

 and he will say no. Ask him why he has not taken his own advice, and 

 he is marooned, and admits that such advice is "more blessed to give 

 than to receive." 



The fact of the matter is that no farmer has ever yet taken a piece 

 of poor land and grown enough feed and forage on it to feed enough 

 stock to make enough manure to bring it up. The following question 

 has been put to a great number of North Carolina farmer audiences, 

 "Let every man who has produced feed and forage enough on a fifty- to 

 a hundred-acre farm of average fertility in North Carolina to feed 

 enough live stock to make enough stable manure to bring the land up 

 to a high state of cultivation hold up his hand." Not a hand has gone 

 up so far. Some farmers, by purchasing forage from their neighbors 

 and cotton-seed meal, bran, shorts, etc., from the merchants, have brought 

 large tracts of land up to a high state of fertility. This practice is 

 commendable in so far as it can be followed. But how is Mr. Jones 

 going to maintain the fertility of his soil if he sells his hay and crop 

 residues to Mr. Smith as forage for his live stock? Some one has said 

 that where one farm has been raised to a high state of fertility by live- 

 stock farming, ten adjacent farms have been lowered in crop-producing 

 power. It is a favorite saying of Mr. B. W. Kilgore that animals 

 destroy fertility and in no sense conserve it. Dr. C. G. Hopkins, whose 



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