THIRD ANNUAL YEAR BOOK — PART VI. 289 



be a strong growth of rape in four or five weeks, at which time hogs may 

 be turned on. We know persons who make a practice of allowing their 

 hogs to have access to the rape right from the start, while others prefer 

 to let it grow seven or eight weeks. Of course it never is a good practice 

 to cut any crop back too severely until it has a strong root development. 

 In the case cited we would prefer to uee the rye section until the rape 

 had made a growth of nine inches or one foot. In this connection we 

 would like to proffer a little advice concerning the yard in which the rye 

 is growing. It will be an excellent plan to sow two or three pounds of 

 rape seed per acre among the rye just as early as possible in the spring, 

 and afterwards harrow in the seed. It will do the rye no 

 harm to give two or three strokes with the harrow, while this 

 will insure the germination of the rape. As the rye becomes woody quite 

 early in the spring the rape will come on and will keep up the supply of 

 fresh pasture. Wherever yards are likely to be left to grow up to weeds 

 we would strongly advise using the means we have described of making 

 them productive. 



F. SOJA OR SOY BEANS AND COW PEAS. 



SHOULD THE SOY BEAN CROP BE GENERALLY INTRODUCED? 



Homestead. 

 Possibly not more than one reader out of every thousand is growing 

 the soy bean, so that at first blush such a subject as the above may 

 seem irrelevant to their conditions. There is one thing about this plant, 

 however, that immediately commends it to the attention of thoughtful 

 farmers, namely its ability to add fertility to the soil. By this we do 

 not mean that a crop of soy beans may be grown and removed from 

 a soil, at the same time enriching its supply of plant food, but we do 

 mean that if the product is fed upon the farm and proper care is taken 

 of the manure the effect will be to increase rather than to decrease 

 the productive power of the soil, owing to: the fact that nitrogen, one 

 of the most expensive elements of plant food, is taken from the atmos- 

 phere and stored in the land by the bean roots. As agriculture pro- 

 gresses greater emphasis will be placed upon the production of such 

 crops, and we are fast approaching the point where we will believe in 

 "balanced rotations" just as much as we do in "balanced rations." It 

 would sometimes appear that the difficulties connected with getting a 

 stand of clover are insurmountable, and where conditions are adverse 

 to the establishment of biennial legumes it is possible that annuals may 

 be made to take their place. The bean belongs to the latter class and 

 we believe that it will find a place in the rotation of not only the south, 

 but of the middle and north-central west. In fact it has been demon- 

 strated that this crop will do quite well wherever the cereals grow. 



