Crop Rotation — Its Purpose and Practice 159 



can better be used to consume to some extent the food 

 supplied by the turned-under sod with its coarse manure, 

 and the cultivation of the corn and potatoes will put the 

 plant food in the soil in the best possible condition for 

 the wheat, aided by the mineral fertilizer appHed, and the 

 soil also will be in the best mechanical condition for seed- 

 ing the wheat crop without replowing, so that if the 

 land is well broken for the corn or the com and 

 potato crops there will be but the one breaking in three 

 years, and a great deal of labor will be saved while 

 the crops will be benefited. 



I do not mean those sections of the Mid- 

 Do^rN^/''''^'' die and Northern States where clover for- 

 Thrive Well nierly throve, and where it has now become 

 difiicult to get a stand, but the more Southern 

 sections of the wheat-growing area in which clover has 

 seldom been a success through the long summers. Here 

 a similar rotation can be practiced with crimson or the 

 annual winter-growing clover, and cow peas used as the 

 legume crops for the making of hay and the improvement 

 of the soil in nitrogen. Assuming that we start with a 

 growth of crimson clover sown the fall before and on which 

 the farm manure has been spread during the winter and 

 spring, we will plow the whole growth under when the 

 clover is in bloom, and prepare the land for corn, sowing 

 peas among the corn at last working as before. These 

 peas are to be mown for hay and the land prepared for 

 wheat or winter oats, and at once, after harvest, the land 

 is again well plowed and cow peas again sown, using not 

 less than one bushel of seed per acre broadcast. When 

 the peas have reached a proper state of maturity, as shown 



