Crop Rotation — Its Purpose and Practice 151 



general average of the cotton belt is about 200 pounds of 

 lint per acre with the general all-cotton practice. 



The adoption of a systematic rotation of crops in the 

 South and the use of the cow peas for the feeding of stock, 

 would open up a profitable industry in the stock feeding, 

 and would result in the making of larger supplies of home- 

 made manure to reheve the farmer from the constant pur- 

 chase of commercial fertihzers. Then, too, the getting of 

 the fibrous matter from the pea roots and the humus from 

 the manure, accompanied by deeper plowing and level 

 cultivation, would check the great tendency of the South- 

 em uplands to wash into gullies, for the clean culture of 

 generations, with the shallow plowing of the one-horse 

 plow, has been the means for great waste in this way, as 

 we have shown in the preceding chapter. The adoption 

 of a short rotation and the growing of the legume crops 

 would enable the Southern hill farmer to dispense with 

 the expensive terracing now found necessary to check 

 the washing of his lands. 



--„ ^ Of course, no hard and fast rules can be 



What ' 



Rotation is laid down that will apply to every farmer s 



Best for the conditions. But the following have been 



Cotton io\m& admirably adapted to the needs of the 



Farmer . . % 



upland cotton farmer. Begmmng with com 



on the land, he should sow peas among the com, at last 



cultivation of the crop. The com should be cut and 



cured in shocks, and if the peas have made a rank growth 



they can be mown for hay, and the surface then finely 



chopped up with a cutaway harrow to prepare the land 



between the shock rows for wheat or winter oats, and 



after the shocks have been removed the spaces they occu- 



