46 SOUTHERN FIELD CHOPS 



by the addition of vegetable matter. Among such soils may be 

 especially noted the limestone valleys, and also the reddish clay 

 or clay-loam soils of the Piedmont region or foothills, the latter 

 being designated in the soil survey reports as belonging to the 

 Cecil series of soils. 



Likewise, the waxy lime lands of central Alabama, north- 

 eastern Mississippi, and of Texas, offer suitable conditions for the 

 growth of wheat when sufficient vegetable matter is incorporated 

 with the soil. On all of these and on many Southern soils, now 

 seldom or never utilized for wheat, this crop should become 

 an important one when the presence of the boll weevil or other 

 incentive shall make imperative a more diversified agriculture. 

 Wheat needs a rich or fairly rich soil. More economical than 

 the use of most forms of commercial fertilizer is the improvement 

 of the soil for wheat by a preceding crop of cowpeas or of other 

 legumes. This is the cheapest means of adding nitrogen, the 

 most expensive plant-food purchased in commercial fertilizers. 

 The preceding crop of legumes should be fertilized with acid 

 phosphate, so as to enable the legumes to make a more luxuriant 

 growth and thus to add to the soil a larger amount of nitrogen 

 than would be possible if this crop had been grown without 

 fertilizer. If the preceding crop of cowpeas is luxuriant, it 

 will often suffice to plow under merely the stubble as a fertilizer 

 for wheat, utilizing the tops of the legume for hay. 



Among the legumes that may be used to fit the land for a 

 profitable crop of wheat are the following : cowpeas and soybeans, 

 as summer growing legumes, on any soils ; red clover on lime soils ; 

 sweet clover (Melilotus alba) on the waxy lime soils ; and crimson 

 clover, a winter-growing annual that is adapted to almost any 

 soil suitable for wheat. 



49. Place in the rotation. In the cotton-belt, the 

 crop preceding wheat is usually [cowpeas, either grown 

 alone or as a catch-crop between rows of corn. It is not 

 unusual for a growth of cowpeas to add 4 to 10 bushels of 

 wheat per acre to the yield of the following wheat crop. 



