118 CROP GROWING AND CROP FEEDING 



where the land is covered with green plants in winter there is little if any 

 loss of nitrogen, but where it lies bare there is a great leaching of nitrates. 

 A cover crop is of far more importance in the South than in the North. Here 

 we have more rain than hard freezing, and the soluble nitrates are rapidly 

 washed out of the bare soil. What we would especially impress on the 

 cotton farmer is the fact that thorough preparation of the soil, clean, flat 

 culture and a good rotation, are far more important to success than the 

 kind and amount of fertilizers he may apply to the crop. I would like to 

 help the Southern farmer out of the slavish dependence on fertilizers, merely 

 for the purpose of getting a little more out of the soil to sell, and to show 

 him that the true place for the plant food in the fertilizer is where it will en- 

 courage the crops that feed his stock, and through them feed his farm. Used 

 in this way you may use the fertilizers liberally, and in no other way do they 

 so well supplement the home-made supply of manure. We hear a good deal 

 about making the manure go as far as it will and then supplement it with 

 fertilizers, but the true way to supplement the manure is to use the fertilizers 

 for the manure-making crop. The phosphoric acid and the potash are then 

 retained on the farm and their use enables you to get a far greater supply 

 of the costly nitrogen. 



A very intelligent South Carolina gentleman recently wrote to me : "You 

 are continually urging our farmers to grow more peas and to cure them for 

 cattle, but you overlook the fact that they have not the cattle to feed them to, 

 and they have not the fences to enclose the cattle ;" and he might have added 

 that in their single cropping they have gotten so dead poor that they cannot 

 buy the stock nor build the fences they need. But even to these men the pea 

 will bring help if not utilized as it should be, for we must never lose sight of 

 the fact that the great value of the pea in the South and of clover in the 

 North, lies in the accumulation and maintenance of humus in the soil, and 

 that the greatest value of humus, aside from its furnishing some nitrogen, 

 lies in its making the soil more retentive of moisture, and thus enabling the 

 farmer to use commercial fertilizers more profitably. The most successful 

 cotton farmers we know are the men who are growing cotton on the level 

 black lands of Eastern North Carolina. These men are able to use an 

 amount of fertilizer per acre that would be destructive to the cotton farm 

 on the dry uplands. They apply from 600 to 800 pounds per acre of a 

 complete fertilizer, and claim that they make it pay. They certainly grow 

 fine crops. They are able to use this amount of fertilizer because of the 

 superior capacity of their soil, which is well supplied with humus, for the 

 retention of moisture for the solution of the fertilizers applied. Hence the 

 plants get the use of it in the best manner. The single cropper on the 



