120 AGRICULTURE 



peas; and plant cotton every year where oats or wheat 

 (and afterwards cowpeas) grew the year before. Study 

 the following diagrams until this order of cropping is 

 understood. 



Under this rotation the soil bears a soil-improving crop 

 two years out of every three and the farm becomes richer 

 year by year. A soil-improving crop can be grown every 

 year by sowing crimson clover, vetch, or bur clover in 

 September among the cotton plants. 



If a farmer wishes half his cultivated area to be in 

 cotton, he can easily do this by growing cotton two years 

 in succession, changing the three-year to a four-year rota- 

 tion. In a four-year rotation each field bears the same 

 crop in the fifth year as in the first. The smaller areas 

 used for peanuts, sweet potatoes, vetches, sorghum, water- 

 melons, and other minor crops are rotated on different 

 parts of a single field near the barn, letting crops that add 

 nitrogen to the soil rotate with those that do not have 

 this power. 



A good rotation for sugar cane in regions where the 

 cane stubble lives through the winter is: first year, 

 corn, with cowpeas grown between for fertilizing the 

 cane ; second year, sugar cane ; third year, or third and 

 fourth years, sugar cane from the stubble. In climates 

 where a good stand of sugar cane does not spring up 

 from the stubble, a rotation for sugar cane is : first 

 year, cowpeas or velvet beans ; second year, sugar cane. 

 In the region just north of the cotton-belt a satisfactory 

 rotation is: first year, wheat, among which red clover or 

 grass seeds are sown ; second year, clover or timothy hay ; 



