134 CROP GROWING AND CROP FEEDING 



being a limestone loving grass, is greatly improved on other soils by an 

 occasional dressing of lime. I have seen steep hills which have been pas- 

 tured annually for a generation and thus top dressed, which to-day feed more 

 cattle than they did 40 years ago, though they have not been plowed in. all 

 that time. 



GRASSES FOR PERMANENT PASTURE. 



While not directly connected with the subject of fertilization, there is 

 so much interest in various parts of the country in the matter of permanent 

 grass pastures, a few words in regard to the best grasses will not be amiss. 

 All along the Atlantic border, from Maryland southward, the Bermuda grass, 

 or Cynodon Dactylon, has established itself; and has, in many places near 

 the northern limit of its growth, become a source of much annoyance to the 

 grower of wheat and other small grain, through its persistent and rapid 

 growth often choking out the sown grain. The farmers of this section know 

 this under the name of wire grass, and in Northern Maryland it meets and 

 mingles with the Northern quack (or couch) grass, and both go under the 

 common name of "wire grass." In that section, and in the upper country 

 of the South, Bermuda grass is only a nuisance. But coming South 

 along the coast plain, on the sandy lands devoted to cotton culture, it attains 

 an increased importance and becomes the most valuable of all grasses for 

 permanent pasture. It is true that it is a hot weather grass only and makes 

 no show in winter; but if mixed with Texas blue grass (Poa Arachnifera) , 

 which is purely a winter growing grass, there is nothing to he desired so far 

 as a permanent pasture is concerned, and the two together will make, on 

 the most sandy lands of the cotton belt, a sod equal to that of the Blue grass 

 of Kentucky. 



But in all the upper red clay lands of the South we do not advise the 

 use of the Bermuda, for in these lands the orchard grass and mountain 

 blue grass (Poa Compressa) will be found better adapted; and the white 

 clover, and in shaded places, Kentucky blue grass, will come in naturally 

 if the fertility of the soil is maintained by an annual dressing of bone meal. 

 In the sandy soils of the coast region the Bermuda and Texas blue grass have 

 no rivals, and here the fertilizer should be varied, and a good percentage of 

 potash added to the dressing. The Bermuda, left alone, makes the densest 

 of sod, since its running stems spread in every direction, burying each other 

 by growth above till the stems below die and decay and gradually accumu- 

 late a mass of decayed organic matter, and the sod gets "hide bound." 

 To restore it, put in a strong team and plow the sod so as to merely turn it 



