90 GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS 



ton fields: first year, cotton; second year, corn with 

 cowpeas planted between the rows, the field to serve 

 as pasture after the corn is gathered; third year, win- 

 ter oats or rye, to serve as winter pasture and to be 

 cut for forage in the spring and be followed by 

 cowpeas either for hay or to be pastured; fourth 

 year, cotton. The general adoption of this or some 

 similar rotation would so enrich the land and in- 

 crease the yield of cotton per acre that the average 

 farm would yield fully as much cotton per year as 

 at present and the immense sums paid annually by 

 the cotton states for beef, butter, bacon, hams, and 

 lard would be saved. Whatever rotation is adopted, 

 the main points to keep in mind are to see to it that 

 leguminous crops of some kind be included as often 

 as possible, tliat crops requiring clean cultivation 

 be interspersed with those that cover and shade the 

 soil, and that so far as possible deep-rooted plants 

 alternate with shallow-rooted ones, and above all that 

 plants liable to the attack of the same insects and 

 diseases do not follow each other on the same land. 

 With crops that occupy the land continuously for a 

 term of years, like orchards or, in the tropics, sugar 

 cane, rotation in the sense in which it is used with 

 annual crops cannot be practiced. In these cases 

 much of the advantao^e of rotation can be secured 

 by alternating clean cultivation with the growth of 

 leguminous cover crops. In the case of sugar cane 

 the land, too, should always be planted to velvet 

 beans or some similar rank-gfrowinof lecfume for a 

 year or two, whenever it is necessary to plow up old 

 fields before they are again replanted to cane. 



