No. 6. DEPAUTiMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 48ft 



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legumiuous crops for the dry soils, and of the warm and hot weather 

 cereals and leguiuiuoiis croits lor the warmer and hot areas of the 

 State, so as to make crop rotations do what all rotations should do, 

 namely, produce the largest amount of human nutrition and at the 

 same time improve the soil permanently. A beginning has been made 

 by the Bureau of Practical Agricultural Educational Work of the De- 

 partment of Agriculture of the State along this line by introducing 

 into the regular four year's rotation with every soil exhausting crop, 

 a soil improving crop. This work was started three years ago in the 

 northern part of York county on the mesozoic sandstone and shale 

 soils on a farm which had been so reduced in fertility that the owner 

 said to the writer that he could not get a renter for the place who 

 would stay on it longer than a year. An examination of the soil re- 

 vealed the fact that the organic matter had been so reduced that vir- 

 tually all fertility for the growing crop had to be obtained from min- 

 eral sources because the humus still in the soil had changed into 

 the inert condition and the quantity was so small that if it had been 

 active humus it would have furnished but little fertility, and the soil 

 was chemically inactive except for the little activity maintained by the 

 commercial fertilizer applied annually, which is an activity not con- 

 ducive to large crop yields, especially in sandy soils, and therefore 

 the tirst and great thing to do was to devise a method for making 

 humus on a soil which had to yield crops and where there was no man- 

 ure, by raising soil improving crops with or following the soil exhaus- 

 ting crops. 



This operation was started with the corn crop. A fertilizer com- 

 posed of 1,200 pounds basic slag, 600 pounds 7% animal tankage and 

 200 pounds muriate of potash in the ton, was applied with the corn 

 in the row at the rate of 200 pounds per acre, and before the last cul- 

 tivation, Whippoorwill cowpeas, which had been inoculated with 

 inoculating material from the Department of Agriculture at 

 Washington, were sown in the corn at the rate of one bushel per acre 

 and covering with the cultivator. The middle of September, when the 

 corn had ripened, which, considering the condition of the soil, was a 

 splendid crop, was cut and when husked yielded 90 baskets of ears per 

 acre. The cowpea vines were in many instances more than two feet 

 long with an average length of 18 inches, and covered the ground 

 completely. As previously indicated, the soil was sandy and the cow- 

 peas and corn stubble were cut up and mixed with the soil with a 

 disk harrow by harrowing the ground three or four times. After 

 the land had been prepared in this way, it was seeded with wheat, 

 and with the wheat 200 pounds per acre of the same mixture of fertil- 

 izer as had been applied with the corn. The following spring, after 

 the middle of April, inoculated hulled white blossom sweet clover seed 

 was sown with the wheat at the rate of 34 quarts per acre and cov- 

 ered with a weeder. The seed came up and grew suflSciently tall that 

 some tops were cut off when the wheat was harvested. The sweet 

 clover was allowed to grow until the middle of August. When it had 

 reached a height of 15 to 20 inches, it was plowed down and the land 

 seeded with wheat again, and with the wheat the following spring, 

 red and alsike clovers were sown, and in this way a soil improving 

 crop was raised with every soil exhausting crop, or a soil exhausting 

 crop followed with a soil improved crop in the old four years' rota- 



