160 CROP GROWING AND CROP FEEDING 



produce by well manured peas and manured corn, you can make your cotton 

 crop a real money crop, clear of any incumbrance of a fertilizer bill. The 

 governing idea in any plan for the improvement of the soil should be the 

 liberal feeding of the renovating and humus making crops. Rye is a good 

 starter for poor land, but it is on the legumes that dependence must be placed 

 for all permanent increase in the humus content and nitrogen in the soil. 



A similar course of improvement can be adopted in a more northern lati- 

 tude, where clover will be the renovating crop. If the land is too poor to grow 

 clover this defect can be remedied by the use of commercial fertilizers. 

 There is hardly an old, worn piece of land in the Middle States that cannot 

 be made to grow clover, if an application of a liberal amount of phosphoric 

 acid and potash is given it. The land will not grow clover because of a lack 

 of plant food in the soil. Supply this want, and remember that in the 

 growing of clover in the North the same conditions that govern the improve- 

 ment of land in the South with the cow pea will govern. You cannot expect 

 something from nothing. If the soil lacks the plant food for the clover it 

 cannot get the clover to gather nitrogen for it; but if the soil is supplied 

 with what the clover needs, it will go to work and get the nitrogen from the 

 air and locate it in the organic matter in the soil, so that subsequent crops 

 can get the use of it. A three year rotation of corn, wheat and clover, with 

 fertilizers applied to the clover at first and the wheat also, and the manure 

 made from the feeding of the clover and corn stover on the land is returned 

 to the clover sod for the corn, you will find that in a little while you need 

 to buy only acid phosphate and potash, and put these on the clover, with ah 

 occasional light dressing of lime, and your wheat will be grown well without 

 further fertilization; for when you come to the making of manure enough to 

 cover the corn field, the wheat will have the best fertilizing possible. 



