186 CROP GROWING AND CROP FEEDING 



North to sell for feed in his store. The result was that the oats came up 

 and looked beautiful in the fall and were killed before Christmas, while the 

 Virginia oats all around him were as green as ever. Of late years there has 

 been some inquiry in regard to winter oats in the North, and farmers there 

 have been inclined to try them. In some winters when snow is abundant 

 and the weather not too severe, they might survive, but the chances are that 

 fall sown oats will not succeed where the mercury goes below zero in winter. 

 Even in the South they are apt to be injured by severe weather if sown too 

 late to get properly tillered and strong before the setting in of cold. Hence, 

 while wheat in the South should never be sown till after frost, the oats crop 

 should always go in the ground in September, if possible, for the best- results. 

 Sown at this time the crop is a reasonably certain one anywhere south of 

 Washington City, and all over the South is far better than the spring sown 

 crop. 



In many sections the oats crop comes in as a part of the rotation of crops 

 preparatory to the sowing of wheat. In many parts of the North the sowing 

 of wheat after corn is not satisfactory, as it cannot be done early enough for 

 the best success there. Hence the common practice is to sow the oats on the 

 corn stubble in the spring, and to fallow the stubble after harvest, as a prepar- 

 ation for the wheat crop in the fall. While this fallow makes a good prepara- 

 tion for the wheat it might be a great improvement in the warmer part of the 

 Middle States to sow cow peas after the oats, with a heavy application of acid 

 phosphate and potash, cut them for hay in September and then at once disc 

 the ground fine for the wheat crop. This will give a fine hay crop and at the 

 same time put the land into better condition for a wheat crop than if the peas 

 were not sown. 



Then, too, there may be an improvement on the practice of putting the 

 oats on the corn land in the spring. It is now generally acknowledged that 

 the nitrates leach rapidly out of bare soil during the winter, but that if there 

 is a cover of green vegetation in winter, the loss is slight, if any. Now, in 

 leaving the corn stubble for the oats in the spring, the land is subjected to 

 this loss of nitrates which might be held there in green cover plants. Hence, 

 where the spring oat crop follows the corn, it would be far better to sow crim- 

 son clover among the corn at the last working, so that it will make for cover 

 crop in winter, and a good crop for plowing under in the spring for the oats. 

 The analysis of the oat plant shows that nitrogen plays an important part in 

 its growth, more than it does in the wheat plant or other small grains. The 

 clover, then, will have the further advantage of furnishing nitrifiable organic 

 matter for the oats. During the brief period in which the spring oat crop 

 holds the land this organic matter will become well advanced and ready to 



