COMMERCIAL FERTILIZERS FOR MAINTENANCE OF FERTILITY 109 



Third year : Cut the oats and at once plow the land well and harrow ip 

 300 pounds per acre of acid phosphate and 50 pounds of muriate of potash, 

 and after a rain has followed the harrowing drill in one and a half bushels 

 of peas per acre. When these are mature, and the first pods are turning 

 yellow, cut them for hay and cure for feed. Disk the stubble over and sow 

 Crimson clover in September to be plowed under for cotton in the spring. 

 It will be well to sow a little rye as a shade to the young clover. With a 

 good stand of clover and rye you will need little fertilizer for the cotton 

 crop that now begins the rotation over again, but for a while -it may be well 

 to use a little acid phosphate on the cotton. One of the best plans for using 

 the cotton seed is that devised by a good farmer in South Carolina. This is 

 to bury the cotton seed in a furrow down the middles. If any seed sprouts 

 it can easily be destroyed in the cultivation of the crop, and the seed will be 

 rotted and ready to feed the plants when fruiting time comes and the roots 

 are searching across the rows. After two or three rounds of this rotation 

 you will find that the only place where you will need any commercial fer- 

 tilizers is on the land to go into peas after oats. Year after year you will 

 be getting more and more forage to feed cattle and can make more and more 

 manure, till finally you will have no difficulty in getting enough to cover the 

 corn-tend, if uniformly spread with the machine. And, better than all, you 

 will have the cattle to bring in money in the spring, so that you can get upon 

 a cash basis and reduce expenses through buying for cash. 



The general experience at the Stations in the cotton belt has been that the 

 use of commercial fertilizers is of special value to the cotton crop in hastening 

 its maturity, while in some instances the use of stable manure had the effect 

 of delaying the maturing of the crop. The corn crop on the farm can use 

 the crude manures from the stock to better advantage than the cotton crop, 

 and by the time the land comes around in cotton again, the manure is better 

 assimilated with the soil, and is in better condition to suit the cotton plant. 

 In the continuous planting of cotton on the same land there has been noticed 

 a cumulative effect from the previous dressings where these have been in 

 liberal amount. In Alabama and Arkansas it was found that nitrogenous 

 manures increased the yield the second season without additional fertiliza- 

 tion, but had lost their effect by the third season. In Alabama the phos- 

 phatic fertilizers increased the yield for three seasons without further 

 applications, and in Eastern North Carolina there seems to have been so 

 much accumulation of phosphoric acid that acid phosphate no longer has 

 any effect when applied as a fertilizer to most of the lands that are cultivated 

 in cotton. In Alabama the application of pulverized rock phosphate, or what 

 is commonly called "floats," in which the chemist finds that the phosphoric 



