SOIL FOR OATS 295 



adjacent plats. The average per cent of gain from rotation 

 with clover and grass has been : wheat, fifty ; maize, twenty- 

 two; and oats, nineteen.^ In the American systems of rotation 

 oats usually follow maize. The following may be recommended: 

 For winter wheat sections: maize, one year; oats, one year; 

 winter wheat, one year ; timothy and common red clover, one or 

 two years. (119) For sections specially adapted to maize and 

 not to wheat : maize, two years ; oats, one year ; timothy and 

 clover, one to three years, depending upon live stock kept. (283) 

 For Southern States : maize and cowpeas, one year ; oats, fol- 

 lowed by cowpeas harvested for hay, one year; cotton, one 

 or two years. In the first year of this rotation, the co^^^eas 

 grown between the rows of maize may be han-ested for grain. 

 It has been shown that a rotation including cowpeas greatly 

 increased the subsequent yield of oats.^ In Arkansas it has 

 been found possible to raise a profitable crop of peas after re- 

 moving a crop of oats, in time to seed to oats again in the fall. 

 When the stubble was plowed under, the subsequent yield of oats 

 was considerably increased, and when the vines also were plowed 

 under, the increased yield of oats was greater than that caused 

 by the application of 400 pounds of a complete commercial 

 fertilizei* per acre.^ 



397. The Influence of Fertilizers. — Fertilizers are seldom ap- 

 plied to the oat crop, both because they are apt to grow too rank 

 and because it usually pays better to apply the manure to some 

 other crop.^ Oats, however, respond very readily to an applica- 

 tion of fertilizers when applied where needed, as shown in various 

 rotations where light and hea\y applications of stable manure and 

 commercial fertilizers were used continuously for ten years.^ 



1 Ind. Rpt. 1895, p. 2^. 



2 Ala. Bui. 95, p. 157. 



3 Ark. Bui. 66. 



4 Ohio Bui. 134, p. 91. 

 C Ind. Bui. 88. 



