152 Practical Farming 



pied may be sown to oats later. Cut these oats and im- 

 mediately after harvest break the land well and sow cow 

 peas broadcast for a hay crop to be cut as soon as the first 

 pods begin to turn yellow. Then crimson clover seed 

 should be sown on the pea stubble as a winter cover. 

 This clover can be turned in the spring and the land pre- 

 pared for cotton, using on the cotton only the mineral 

 fertilizers, acid phosphate and potash, for the clover and 

 peas preceding will give all the nitrogen needed, and fully 

 half the cost of the fertihzer will thus be saved. At the last 

 working of this cotton sow the crimson clover seed again 

 at the rate of fifteen pounds per acre among the cotton. 

 Now, during the winter haul out and spread with a manure- 

 spreader on this clover all the home-made manure from 

 the feeding of the pea forage and the corn fodder, and 

 when the clover blooms in the spring turn it under deeply 

 for com again. Cultivate this com level and shallow, 

 and repeat the sowing of peas among it and then repeat 

 the general rotation. Following this method a few years 

 will soon show a great increase, not only in the cotton 

 crop but in the corn and small grain crops as well. One 

 young farmer whom we had induced to adopt this rota- 

 tion for cotton, wrote to me enthusiastically that he had 

 found that cotton was not the only crop that would bring 

 him money, for he had made seventy-five bushels of winter 

 oats per acre and then had made two tons per acre of cow 

 pea hay on the same land the same season, and that the 

 hay v/as salable at $20 per ton, so that the crop of oats 

 and hay were worth a great deal more than a crop of cot- 

 ton; that the oats and the feeding of stock gave him cash 

 at different seasons so that he was able to run his cotton 



