The Bulletin. 15 



Tho cotton crop pays for liberal fertilization, and when good tillage 

 methods are practiced, and cover crops grown to prevent loss of plant 

 food by leaching and surface washing, and to add vegetable matter to 

 keep the soil in good physical condition, cotton can, when liberally 

 fertilized, be gTOwni on the same land continuously and profitably. 

 However, it is better to have some system of rotation in which legumes 

 can be gro^vTi. Recently conducted experiments with soil types indi- 

 cate that under good methods of farm practice, a fertilizer analyzing 

 ten per cent phosphoric acid, two per cent each of nitrogen and pot- 

 ash, is about the proportion required in the Piedmont section of the 

 State, and for the eastern sandy loam s^ils, seven per cent phosphoric 

 acid, three and one-half per cent nitrogen and three per cent potash is 

 about the right proportion ; but on soils deficient in humus and lack- 

 ing in nitrogen, a fertilizer containing as much as 4 to 5 per cent 

 nitrogen may be used. 



CULTIVATION OF THE CROP. 



The cultivation of the crop should begin early, even before the 

 cotton is up. The weeder or light slant-tooth harrow, or both, as the 

 condition of the soil will permit, are the proper tools to use at this 

 time, and the use of these should be continued at frequent intervals, 

 or after every shower, until cotton is chopped to a stand. The use of 

 these implements will prevent the formation of a crust and will con- 

 serve the moisture. 



Chopping should be done as early as practical after the third leaf 

 has formed, and each stalk given to understand what is expected of 

 it before it acquires the spindling habit. 



Cultivation should be rapid and shallow. The cotton plant re- 

 sponds very perceptibly to good cultivation. Frequent and shallow 

 cultivation, every week or ten days, promotes early growth and devel- 

 opment of the plant and hastens maturity. There is no plant that 

 will bear more neglect than the cotton plant. It may be neglected 

 in the early part of the growing season and afterwards given good cul- 

 tivation and may make a good weed and put on a heavy crop of fruit, 

 but it will be late in maturing and is often ruined by frost. Neglected 

 cultivation is always at the expense of earliness, and in this section of 

 the cotton belt earliness is desirable. 



While the plant is small and the root system undeveloped, the cul- 

 tivation may be three or four inches deep and no harm done, but after 

 the fruiting period starts and the roots begin to fill the soil, the 

 cultivations should be very shallow. Many farmers injure their 

 crops very seriously in July by cultivating too deep, thereby often 

 materially lessening the crop. One to two inches is usually sufficient 

 depth to cultivate after fruiting begins. 



