l88 SOILING CROPS AND THE SILO. 



plant in order to grow it in the best form. Soils 

 abounding in vegetable matter and naturally warm 

 and friable, and which furnish plant food abundantly 

 in a readily available form, are best adapted to the 

 growth of millet. Such soils abound in much of 

 the prairie region which extends from the Gulf of 

 Mexico far northward, although in seasons that are 

 moist, good crops of millet may be grown even on 

 stiff clays. But these soils are not well suited, as a 

 rule, to the growth of millet. In nearly all instances 

 too much labor has to be bestowed upon such soils 

 to prepare a seed bed sufficiently fine and moist. 

 They are not sufficiently penetrable to the roots of 

 the millet, and the plant food in them is not suffi- 

 ciently available. Light and hungry sandy soils are 

 ill adapted to the growth of this crop, and the same 

 is true of soils unduly moist and cold. But immense 

 crops can be grown on the muck soils of drained 

 sloughs and marshes. Millet can be grown nicely 

 under irrigation in the warm mountain valleys of the 

 west. But in these it is not specially needed because of 

 the abundant product of alfalfa obtained from them. 



Place in the Rotation. Millet in nearly all its 

 varieties may be given almost any place in the rota- 

 tion. It may be the sole crop for the season, or it 

 may be grown as a catch crop. It is more com- 

 monly grown as a catch crop, since in many sections 

 the season is amply long to grow a crop of millet 

 after another crop has been removed and before an 

 autumn crop has been planted on the same land. 



Millet is seldom made the sole crop grown upon 

 the land, except in instances where the husbandman 

 has been unable to sow other crops in season, because 



