SOME MINOR CROPS 189 



manure to help release him from the grasp of the fertilizer mixer; the most 

 important matter of all to the Southern farmer. In the first starting of such 

 a lot it may be necessary, in some places, from lack of fertility, to use a liberal 

 supply of commercial fertilizer. In some sections crimson clover has failed 

 from two causes, first lack of plant food in the soil, and, secondly, the absence 

 of the nitrifying microbes in the soil. It has frequently been found that this 

 clover fails the first season it is sown and succeeds on the same land the next 

 season, simply because in the meantime the soil has become infected with the 

 needed microbes. But while clover of any kind does not, on a fairly fertile 

 soil, need any application of nitrogen, it nevertheless is greatly helped on a 

 poor soil by an application of stable manure. In one section we have visited 

 the farmers uniformly failed to get a good growth of this clover on their 

 sandy soil. One fall a man in the adjoining town who had a livery stable, 

 hauled out a good quantity of manure on one of his lots near the town, and 

 sowed the land in crimson clover. The growth on that land was simply enor- 

 mous, and revealed to the farmers around the reason for their lack of success. 

 The same season of this success a farmer hauled out his manure from stall fed 

 cattle and spread it down between his cotton rows after he had completed the 

 cultivation of the crop, and then sowed crimson clover seed among the cotton, 

 and had a great success. So where the annual clover is to make the starting 

 point for a soiling crop it will not be amiss if the manure is at hand to help 

 it in that way, and then to further supplement the manure with a good dress- 

 ing of acid phosphate and potash, mixed in proportion of five parts of acid 

 phosphate to one part of muriate of potash. Two hundred pounds of this per 

 acre on land that has had a light dressing of manure will insure a remarkable 

 cutting of clover. Soiling crops in summer, followed by the silage in winter 

 will form the key to successful stock feeding and dairying in many sections 

 of the country. Some place a great value on green rye as a soiling crop, be- 

 cause of its earliness. But rye is poor food for any animal and makes very 

 poor and ill-flavored milk. The newly introduced hairy vetch will well take 

 the place of rye in any section. It will give as early a growth, and a food 

 material incalculably better than the rye, and it can be well used as the start- 

 ing point of the season's soiling and be followed by cow peas and corn. 



CROPS FOR HOGS TO GATHER. 



Near akin to the soiling practice is the one becoming common in some 

 sections, of planting certain small lots near at hand with crops that the pigs 

 can gather for themselves. This, too, is a practice for which the long seasons 

 in the South furnish especial advantage. While rooting their food from the 



