112 CROP GROWING AND CROP FEEDING 



soil, while gradually using less of the purchased fertilizer, until he needs to 

 buy none but phosphoric acid, and perhaps potash, and these for the pea crop 

 alone; for by a proper rotation and the production of a plentiful supply of 

 forage crops, that will go to make together a balanced ration for cattle, he 

 can supply his soil all the nitrogen needed; and can accumulate fertility 

 in the land till his money crop is produced in its highest excellence, without 

 any direct application of commercial fertilizer. The investigations of the 

 Stations in the study of the manurial requirements of the various crops, have 

 had the effect of getting farmers to think that for every crop planted they 

 must have a special fertilizer. Good farming with cotton or any other crop 

 does not mean merely the production of large crops ; but in the production of 

 crops at the lowest possible expense, while increasing the fertility of the soil. 

 It is not good farming to teach farmers that they need make an application 

 of fertilizer to every crop planted, and we will never get them to see the value 

 of a rotation, till we show that a rotation can do what we have said is good 

 farming. One of the labor-wasting practices long in vogue among cotton 

 farmers in the South, is what is called composting. Having but little 

 manure from the few cattle kept, and that of poor quality from the poor and 

 scant feed, they go to work to haul a lot of soil from woods and fence rows 

 and mix with the manure, and turn and chop it down with the notion that 

 they are making the whole good manure. And then this laboriously made 

 pile of dirt, is dribbled in a parsimonious way, in the furrows under the 

 cotton ; the only use it has being to enable the plant to use better the fertilizer 

 they add to it. It takes our farmers a long time to realize that it is far 

 cheaper to grow the organic matter all over the soil, ready spread, than to 

 pile and turn it and haul to the field ; and that far more of it can be grown 

 there than can be hauled there by any one. The rotation we prefer for a 

 three-year rotation with cotton has already been given, and the experience of 

 those who have adopted it has abundantly proved its correctness. While in 

 the first stages of the building up of a poor piece of cotton land, it may be 

 advisable to apply some fertilizer to each crop planted, the farmer who 

 strictly follows the three-year rotation we have given, will soon find that all 

 the commercial fertilizer he needs to buy will be acid phosphate and potash 

 for the peas, and the peas will do all the rest, if they are properly fed to 

 stock ; while, at the same time, they are feeding the soil direct. Our Editor 

 of the Office of Experiment Stations further says, that, on the great majority 

 of the soils of the Cotton States it is advisable to use as a concentrated fertili- 

 zer, a complete manure; that is one containing soluble phosphoric acid, 

 available phosphoric acid and available nitrogen, rather than a manure 

 containing only one or two of these ingredients. This may be true if the 



