l6O SOILING CROPS AND THE SILO. 



also be occasions when the ground should be plowed 

 in the fall, as for instance, when the land is very foul. 

 It may then be at least partially cleaned in the spring 

 before the seed is sown. And when old sod lands are 

 covered with a dense turf, it may be a good practice 

 to plow them in the fall, to give the roots more time 

 to decay before the planting of the crop. When 

 such lands have been plowed, the surface soil should 

 be cut up deeply and finely by some implement 

 adapted to such work. The roots of the young 

 plants can then push their way through the soil much 

 more readily and the decay of the sod will be 

 much hastened. 



It is not easy to make the land too rich for cab- 

 bage by the application of fertilizers, but it would be 

 easy to so apply fertilizers that there would be waste 

 of the same. For instance, if farmyard manure, 

 commercial fertilizers, or both were applied in excess 

 of the needs of the crop on a leachy soil and in an 

 area possessed of a rainy climate, much of the excess 

 of fertility unused by the crop would be washed out 

 of the soil before the planting of the next crop. That 

 the plants may be abundantly supplied with food, 

 and that such waste may be avoided, the practice has 

 become common when growing cabbage to apply 

 much of the fertilizer along and near the line of the 

 row where the plants are to be grown. But where 

 fertility has thus to be distributed with so much care, 

 it is at least questionable if cabbage can be profitably 

 grown as a food for live stock. On many of the 

 prairies of the west, especially in the slough lands of 

 the same, enormous crops can be grown without the 

 application of any kind of fertilizer. 



