YIELDS OF COWPEA HAY 



201 



for better farming. Leng southern summers are longer 

 than the corn crop can utilize; the cowpea fills in the 

 space and keeps the land busy till fall, meanwhile gather- 

 ing humus-making material and nitrogen. Two tons 

 of cowpea vines to the acre equal in nitrogen content 

 600 pounds of nitrate of soda. The cowpea may not 

 always enrich soils. Mooers found at the Tennessee 

 station that where cowpeas and wheat alternated in rota- 



Cowpeas in a Southern Field. 



tion, and the peas were removed from the land, the yield 

 of wheat was reduced over adjacent plots where wheat 

 followed wheat. In Louisiana, turning under cowpeas 

 increased the yield of sugar-cane the first year 2.91 tons, 

 the second year 3.69 tons and the third year 0.82 tons. 

 The soil on which this cane grew was the alluvial soil of 

 the Mississippi River Delta, fully supplied with phos- 

 phorus and potassium, lacking only nitrogen and humus. 

 The Delaware station finds that a maximum crop of al- 



