194 Practical Farming 



crops are brought in frequently on the land, fed to stock 

 and the manure carefully saved and returned to the soil, 

 the farmer never needs to buy nitrogen or ammonia in any 

 form, since the legume crops will give all the nitrogen the 

 succeeding crop of small grain needs, and that, if then, the 

 small grain crop is Hberally suppHed with phosphoric acid 

 and potash, these will be the only fertilizers needed, and 

 these will be needed only on the one small-grain crop that 

 is the money crop, or on the cotton in the cotton farm. 



In fact, it will often be found that if these forms of plant 

 food are given to the preceding legume crop the result on 

 the following crop will often be better than if they had been 

 appHed to the crop itself, while the increased yield of the 

 legume crop will not only give an increased amount of 

 feed for stock and the making of manure, but will result 

 in an increased amount of nitrogen fixing by that crop. 



Since the nitrogen in any complete fertihzer mixture 

 usually costs as much as all the rest, it will be seen that 

 double the amount of phosphoric acid and potash can be 

 bought without any increase of expense, while the result 

 in the improvement of the soil will be far greater than 

 where the farmer depends on a complete fertihzer merely 

 to produce a crop to sell off the land. 



In the southern part of the winter wheat belt the wheat 

 should be preceded by a crop of cow peas. If these are 

 sown among com, and wheat follows the corn it will be 

 well to chop the whole growth in with the cutaway harrow 

 so as to leave the vegetable matter on the surface as much 

 as possible. Then, assuming that the previous corn crop 

 was planted on crimson clover manured in winter and 

 turned under in the spring, there will be an amount of 



