12 FARMING. 



ground in time to sow cow-peas for a second hay crop or to grow a 

 crop of corn. 



But the greatest of legume crops, and the one especially adapted 

 to Southern conditions, is the so-called cow-pea, Vigna catiang, which 

 in numerous varieties is grown all over the State. Some of the 

 earliest varieties will mature two crops in one season on the same 

 land. But the early sorts are not so large hay-makers as the later 

 ones, and, as the season is long enough over the greater part of the 

 State to mature any of them, the heavy growing sorts are to be pre- 

 ferred to the bush varieties. With the cow-pea the farmer of North 

 Carolina can accomplish as much the same season after a wheat or 

 oat crop is cut as could be done with red clover in two years, and for 

 the rapid improvement of the soil and the production of heavy forage 

 crops, either for hay or for soiling green, there are few crops that 

 can compare with it. The great advantage that the Southern pea 

 has over red clover is that it can be used in the starting of the im- 

 provement of a badly run-down piece of land, on which clover would 

 hardly grow at all, for the pea will make a fair crop on land too much 

 depleted to grow clover, and can be used for the purpose of getting it 

 into condition in which clover and the grasses will thrive. But the 

 cow-pea makes a hay of greater feeding value than red clover, and it 

 is produced in such a short time that, except under peculiar circum- 

 stances in the upper districts, it should be used rather than clover, 

 as it enables the farmer to make a short rotation and more rapidly 

 bring up his land while growing increasing crops of the sale crop. 

 It has been well called the "Clover of the South/' and no farm rota- 

 tion in North Carolina is good that ignores the cow-pea. 



Another legume crop which has been found valuable, and which 

 thrives in North Carolina far better than in the North, is the Japanese 

 soja or soy bean. Many varieties of this, too, are grown, and in all 

 the warmer parts of the State the taller-growing and later varieties 

 are more valuable than the dwarf and early ones that succeed in the 

 North. While hardly as valuable for the improvement of the soil as 

 the cow-pea, the soy-bean makes a heavy crop of forage and is easily 

 cured. It is also valuable for mixing with corn in the silo. 



Melilotus alba, or sweet clover, grows spontaneously all over the 

 State, and though considered more of a weed than anything else, it 

 has the same capacity for improving the soil through the fixation of 

 the free nitrogen from the air that other legumes have, and it has 

 also been found that the soil where it grows becomes inoculated with 

 the bacteria that live on the roots of alfalfa, and it can be used for 

 inoculating land for the growing of alfalfa. 



GRASSES. 



No part of the country is better supplied with native grasses than 

 North Carolina, and most of the grasses cultivated in the North thrive 



