SOME MINOR CROPS 187 



feed the crop following. Then when the oats are cut the land is sown in cow 

 peas, and a good application of acid phosphate and potash will cause a fine 

 growth of the peas, which can be mown for hay in September or October and 

 the land at once well disced (but not replowed), for the wheat. Managed 

 in this way we get two leguminous crops on the land between the corn and the 

 wheat, and get a lot of excellent forage that we would not get if the oats stub- 

 ble was merely summer fallowed. 



The old plan of letting land lie out in sod year after year is fast giving 

 way to the short rotation and the keeping of the land always at work, grow- 

 ing something either for feed or soil improvement. The old long rotation, so 

 common once in Southeastern Pennsylvania, necessitated the division of the 

 farm into a multitude of little fields, and made the keeping up of fences a 

 serious item in the expenses of the farm, for fences are needed wherever long 

 pasturage is practiced. But with the coming in of the short rotation and a 

 standing permanent pasture, the capacity of the farm for the feeding of stock 

 is immensely increased. It has taken our farmers a long time to learn that 

 pasturage belongs to sections of wider area and cheap land, that where farms 

 are small and land costly a different method must be practiced, and the 

 greater value of the products will warrant a more intensive agriculture. This 

 has led, of late years, to the giving of more attention to 



SOILING CROPS. 



While the places where an exclusive practice of soiling are limited to the 

 high priced acres in the immediate vicinity of the larger cities, where dairy- 

 ing for milk can be profitably carried on and the product retailed, there is 

 still much importance to the general farmer in the production of some soiling 

 crops, and the practice, at times, of feeding cattle cut food green. There are 

 always times in nearly every summer when the pasture is too short and dry to 

 keep up the flow of milk, or even to keep cows in fairly good condition. If 

 purchased food must be used to supplement the pasture it makes a costly ad- 

 dition to the expense account. Therefore it is to the interest of everyone who 

 keeps cows (and of course that means all farmers) to provide from his own 

 acres a balanced ration for his animals. The amount of food that can be 

 gotten in a green state from a small area of highly enriched land would be a 

 revelation to those who have never tried it. While soiling is adapted to every 

 part of the country it is nevertheless true that the longer season in the South- 

 ern States gives the farmer there a wider range of crops for this purpose and 

 a longer time for green feeding. While we do not believe in what is com- 

 monly termed "green manuring," or the plowing under of immature crops 



