The Bulletin. 47 



next, or sweet potatoes, cotton, or something like that; but I never 

 made a success with tobacco following peas. If you take a piece of 

 dead, poor land, you can use peas first year, but after that keep peas 

 out to make tobacco. 



Mk. Moss : That is a difficulty with peas which arises frequently. 

 The three-year rotation is one of the rotations we have been experi- 

 menting with in Pitt County, and the land we took up three or four 

 years ago came back to tobacco this year. The first year it made a 

 very light crop, but this year we got 900 or 1,000 pounds of good 

 tobacco. 



Mk. Laughinghouse : My experience is very much like his, 'No 

 practical man who has had any experience will plant tobacco after 

 peas, unless it be a very poor, sandy soil. You can raise just as much 

 tobacco on the soil, and it will be just as fine in appearance, but when 

 you cure, no power on earth can keep it from turning perfectly red, and 

 red tobacco is not in demand in eastern ISTorth Carolina. Kested land 

 always makes a good crop of tobacco. The weeds give it humus and 

 other necessary elements to make a perfect crop of tobacco. I have 

 tried this experiment. The finest crop of tobacco I ever raised was 

 on a very poor land that would not raise com and had been resting. 

 I determined to put in sixteen acres, and I got $1,500. Most tobacco 

 farmers in our State are not aware that phosphoric acid is not needed 

 on eastern JNTorth Carolina lands, especially wherever there has been 

 lime. 



Mr. Moss : I should like to know if you noticed any difference in 

 the field in growing tobacco after the sulphate and the muriate of 

 potash? 



Mr. Laughinghouse : I have raised just as fine tobacco with the 

 muriate as with the sulphate; but if you have an excessive season, 

 either wet or dry, the tobacco will bum with muriate. Any man will 

 realize that the sulphate is the one to be used for tobacco. An excess 

 of either wet or dry weather will make the tobacco diseased twice as 

 quickly with muriate as with sulphate, 



THE CONTROL OF FERTILITY IN THE SOIL. 



By C. L. Goodrich, Agriciilturist, Office of Farm Management, U. S. Department of Agriculture. 



Mr. Chairman and Farmers of North Carolina: I am glad to be with you 

 to-day. I have been very much pleased to meet some farmers from different 

 parts of North Carolina, to whom I have talked previously. Now, I am not 

 here to tell you anything new to-day. I am going to talk to you about old 

 things — old things that are so important that we have to talk about and think 

 about them every day on the farm. 



The business of farming is based on fertility in the soil, and the success or 

 failure of the farmer in his business of farming is measured, to a very large 

 degree, by his skill in controlling fertility in the soil. Are you controlling 

 fertility in the soils of your farms to the best advantage? When we study 

 the reports of the Census Bureau we find that the average yield of corn for the 

 State of North Carolina is placed at present somewhere about IS bushels to 

 the acre, and the yield of cotton somewhere around a half bale to the acre. 



