WHERE WINTER WHEAT is TIIK MOXKV CROP 123 



he was not surprised at this and simply kept on following a rotation which he 

 had planned for the improvement of the land. Last season he said that his 

 wheat crop, on the same field that once made 6 bushels per acre, was 35 

 bushels per acre, and that he was satisfied that wheat could be as successfully 

 grown on the Southern uplands as anywhere. But this farmer had been wise 

 enough to adapt his farming to the conditions of his environment. He had 

 found that in the sunny South red clover is a very uncertain crop, and that 

 its place could be well taken by the Southern pea. Accordingly he had 

 adopted a rotation in which the pea took the place of clover, and enabled 

 him to make more crops in a short rotation than he could with clover, which 

 remained on the land a whole year. His rotation was corn, with peas planted 

 among it and all the manure of the farm applied to it. Corn cut off at the 

 ground, cured in shocks and the stover all saved for feed. Land well disced, 

 the peas chopped up, and winter oats sown. Next spring the oats are har- 

 vested and the land at once prepared for peas, with a dressing of acid phos- 

 phate and potash. Peas are mown for hay and the land again disced only, 

 and the surface made fine and sown to wheat. After the wheat is harvested 

 the land is plowed and peas sown again and another crop of hay made. Rye 

 is then sown as a winter cover, and during the winter the manure is gotten 

 out, spread on the rye and all turned under in March for the corn crop ; and 

 the rotation begins again. At first he found that it was better, in the poverty 

 stricken state of his soil, to plow under all the meagre growth of peas for the 

 wheat and corn, but later on, as the growth became heavier, he found that this 

 would not only be a waste of feed, but that the land could not- be so well 

 prepared for the wheat crop. He then got to feeding more cattle and utiliz- 

 ing the forage he was growing so largely, and found that the feeding was a 

 profitable part of his farming; and that his land was constantly improving 

 while the farms around him, which were being worked in the old way, in 

 cotton alone, were washing and wasting. There is no reason, however, that a 

 similar rotation should not be fully as good for those upland farmers who 

 wish to adhere to the cotton crop. In their case the rotation could be made, 

 corn with all the home-made manure, followed by wheat, with commercial 

 fertilizer without nitrogen, peas after the wheat is cut, and these made into 

 hay, and rye sown on the stubble as a winter cover, and plowed under in early 

 March for cotton. Commercial fertilizers used on the cotton, and crimson 

 clover sown among the cotton in September. Then, during the winter, get 

 out all the farm manure on the clover, and in March plow all under for corn 

 and begin the rotation over again. In this rotation, the wheat, coming 

 directly after the corn, to which the manure and clover was applied, will have 

 the best chance, will need no fertilizer except acid phosphate ; the cotton f ol- 



