170 CROP GROWING AND CROP FEEDING 



southward there are few localities in which it cannot be successfully grown. 

 It is a plant particularly adapted to Southern conditions. All over the South, 

 particularly in the cotton belt, the red clover has been found a very uncer- 

 tain plant, as it burns out during the heat of the first summer. But the 

 crimson clover, sown in the fall and making its growth during winter and 

 early spring, has been found in most places of inestimable value. Its growth 

 is made at a time when no crops are needed on the land, and it keeps up the 

 fixing of nitrogen in the soil during all the mild winter weather, and makes 

 a fine preparatory crop for either corn or cotton. It furnishes the cotton 

 farmer a crop to cover his fields that would otherwise be bare all winter, for it 

 can be sown among the standing cotton, and thus provide a fine preparatory 

 crop for the corn that follows the next spring in a three year rotation. With 

 crimson clover in winter and the cow pea in summer, the cotton farmers have 

 a team of legumes that cannot be equalled in other parts of the country, and 

 which enables them more rapidly to improve their lands than can be done 

 anywhere else. 



In the South there has grown up an impression that crimson clover suc- 

 ceeds best when sown on land without any preparation whatever. This has 

 grown out of the fact that we have had uniform success in sowing the seed 

 on a wheat or oats stubble, and it is not the absence of preparation, but the 

 shading of the stubble that has protected the young clover from the sun. 

 Sown among corn after the last working, and before the ground has at all 

 crusted, will usually be successful. The same may be said of sowing among 

 cotton at last working in August. When sown on well prepared land and 

 fully exposed to our hot August or September sun there is frequently a loss 

 of the entire sowing, if" the seed germinates after a summer shower followed 

 by a hot sun, which scalds off the young plants. One of the best nurse-plants 

 is a light sowing of buckwheat. This germinates quickly and makes a shade 

 at once. Fall oats- will also answer very well in the South, and the whole can 

 be mown together in the spring as soon as the clover is fairly in bloom. This 

 is an important point, if the clover is intended for hay, for if the heads are 

 allowed to mature the stiff hairs on them make the hay a dangerous food for 

 horses. As I write this the following wise editorial comes to hand in the 

 American Agriculturist : 



"A few years ago seedsmen began pushing crimson clover and insisting 

 that it could be grown almost anywhere. After careful investigation The 

 American Agriculturist warned its readers, in cold climates, to avoid sowing 

 extensively with the expectation of carrying it over the winter. We pointed 

 out the benefit which might be derived from seeding in spring or mid-summer 

 and plowing under as green manure. The past five years experience proves 



