The Wheat Crop 191 



been sown at last working, and are thoroughly chopped 

 up with the disk harrow in preparing for wheat. After the 

 wheat, on which an appHcation of acid phosphate has been 

 made, the land is well broken and sown to cow peas at the 

 rate of one and a half bushels per acre. These are to be 

 cut for hay, and crimson clover sown at once on the 

 stubble. The clover is turned under in spring for cotton, 

 planted on the level and worked level and shallow, and at 

 last working of the cotton, crimson clover seed are again 

 sown to be plowed under in spring for corn, after all the 

 manurial accumulations of the farm have been spread on 

 the clover during the winter. This will give a three-year 

 rotation that will soon result in heavy crops of wheat and 

 heavy crops of cotton, and the forage grown from the peas 

 and com will enable the Southern farmer to feed more 

 stock and make more manure at home, and so get gradu- 

 ally independent of the fertilizer factory except for phos- 

 phoric acid and potash. 



Rotative cropping and the feeding of live stock are the 

 great needs of the South, and system Hke this will soon 

 develop the fact that in all the Piedmont region of the 

 South the crop of wheat and pea vine hay the same season 

 will be worth more really than the cotton crop. But of the 

 cotton crop in general we will treat in a separate chapter. 

 Single cropping in any region and with 



Wheft^ Cro ^^y ^^^P ^^^^ ^^^^^y ^^^^^^ '^ ^^^^ exhaustion 

 and poverty to the farmer. It has had this 

 result in the cotton coimtry, and many tobacco sections of 

 the South, and it is rapidly having this effect in the spring 

 wheat sections of the Northwest. While in the old soils 

 of the winter wheat section of the East the fanners in 



