252 GRASSES AND HOW TO GROW THEM. 



will produce good crops of corn, and that wlicre 

 it is grown the other conditions being right, the 

 yield will he proportionate to the richness of the soil. 

 Excellent crops may usually be grown on rich alluvial 

 soils and calcareous loams if Avell drained. It is impor- 

 tant that all lands on which it grows shall be free from 

 superfluous water, as soils that contain an excess of 

 water are much adverse to the growth of Johnson grass. 

 While it will grow on sandy and light soils, even on 

 sandy dunes and barren fields, the yields are small and 

 unsatisfactory. 



Place in the Rotation. — It can scarcely be said of 

 Johnson grass that it is a rotation plant, since, usually 

 when grown for hay, it is grown indefinitely from year 

 to year. Because of the persistence with which it groAvs 

 up in other crops that follow it, and from year to year, 

 it ought not to be grown in the alternations of any reg- 

 ular rotation. Wherever it is grown, the aim should 

 be to grow only Johnson grass and to so stimulate its 

 growth by fertilizers that a maximum of production 

 will result. But there is a sort of alternation in whicli 

 it is frequently grown, that is to say, a crop of grain 

 such as winter oats harvested early in the season, and 

 two successive crops of hay taken the same season from 

 the Johnson grass, these growing up from the roots of 

 the grass that are in the soil. This is made possible 

 and also practicable by the slow growth of the Johnson 

 grass in^ cool weather, and by the favorable influence 

 which, under certain conditions, breaking up the root 

 system has upon the growth of the plants. Clover has 

 also been sown on the scarified or disked surface of a 



