142 CROP GROWING AND CROP FEEDING 



moderate amount of fertilizers,, insisting that a heavier fertilization made 

 the tobacco coarser and later. Some years since a grower in one of the 

 tobacco counties in Xorth Carolina, wrote to me asking for a formula for a 

 tobacco fertilizer, as he knew that I had been conducting a series of very ex- 

 tensive experiments in the fertilization of this crop. I gave him the follow- 

 ing formula, and advised him to use 700 pounds of the mixture per acre. 

 Acid phosphate, 900 pounds; dried blood, 600 pounds; nitrate of soda, 100 

 pounds, and high grade sulphate of potash, 400 pounds. He took my advice, 

 and when his crop was marketed sent me the report of the commission mer- 

 chant who sold it, showing that his tobacco brought the highest average price 

 of* the season. Soon after- this a man from the same county wrote to me for 

 a formula, and I gave him the same. He wrote me that 700 pounds was an 

 amount entirely too large and could not possibly make fine tobacco. I sent 

 him the report of the man from his own county who wrote me that his suc- 

 cess was so marked that he intended to increase the quantity of fertilizer. 



There is a widespread impression among the growers of bright tobacco 

 that the use of peas or clover on their lands is detrimental to the quality of 

 the tobacco. I believe this to be an error, and believe that the development 

 of the fertility of any soil will enable the grower to grow a larger crop of the 

 same tobacco for which his soil has been found suited. In one of the eastern 

 counties of North Carolina, some years ago at a Farmers' Institute, I advo- 

 cated the use of the cow pea as a preparatory crop for tobacco. The growers 

 objected, and said that they had always understood that peas would spoil 

 the quality of the leaf. Two years after that I was again in the same county 

 holding an Institute, and stopped over night at the residence of the largest 

 tobacco grower in the country. To my surprise I found that he not only had 

 every vacant spot on the plantation covered with peas, but was planting a hill 

 of peas between every hill of tobacco as soon as the priming off began ; tobacco 

 there being cured by pulling the leaves as they ripen and not cutting the 

 whole plant, so that by the time the crop was gathered he had a luxuriant 

 field of peas to enrich the land. The land then in peas was to be planted in 

 tobacco the next year, while corn took most of the tobacco land with its 

 growth of peas, to be followed by winter oats, and these by peas again for 

 tobacco. The appearance of his 150 acres of tobacco fully warranted the 

 success of the practice. In the upper Piedmont country of Virginia, the 

 farmers have been very successful in the growing of a black wrapper 

 tobacco, by practicing a rotation on the land where they grew tobacco, 

 different from that part of the farm where they grew most of their corn and 

 other grain. On their tobacco land they practice a three year rotation of 

 clover, tobacco and wheat, and use no fertilizer whatever ; depending entirely 



