FARMING. 13 



equally well here. While timothy, the great hay-grass of the North, 

 does not thrive well in the warmer parts of the State, it is perfectly at 

 home in the high mountain valleys and plateaus west of the Blue 

 Ridge Mountains. The traveler from the North passing through the 

 cotton country and seeing none of the grass-fields he has been accus- 

 tomed to at home, is apt to jump to the conclusion that grass does not 

 thrive here. The fact is that the chief effort of the cotton farmers 

 for generations has been to kill grass, and with the least neglect in 

 the early stages of the cotton crop it becomes hopelessly "in the grass.'' 

 The neglect of grass has been the greatest error in the farming of the 

 cotton country, for it will certainly thrive, as has been abundantly 

 proved, where an intelligent effort has been made to grow it. The 

 statistics of the Census Bureau show that for ten years past the aver- 

 age hay crop per acre has been larger in North Carolina than in New 

 York or Iowa. And, though hay sells for three or four times the price 

 here that it does in Iowa, there is but a trifling amount grown as 

 compared with Iowa. The greater yield here is not due to greater 

 fertility of soil than Iowa, but to the greater rainfall and the longer 

 season that permits more crops to be made. But as yet, with the 

 exception of the fertile bottom-lands along the rivers and creeks, the 

 southern upland country does not need grass, but does need the 

 legumes for the improvement of the soil and the making of hay far 

 superior in quality to any grass hay. But on any land here in good 

 heart one can count on fair crops of hay from orchard grass, tall 

 meadow oats grass, Italian rye grass, and the fescues. 



For summer pasture we have the Bermuda grass, the finest of all 

 the pasture grasses in a Southern climate. No grass in the North is 

 more nutritious, and no grass grown in the North has the same 

 capacity for growing in the hottest and dryest weather of summer. 

 While a nuisance in the cultivated fields, no North Carolina farm 

 should be without a permanent pasture of Bermuda. When mixed 

 with Texas blue-grass the pasturage can be kept up through the year, 

 as the Texas blue-grass is a winter-growing grass, while the Bermuda 

 thrives only during the heat of summer. Both together make the 

 ideal permanent pasture for North Carolina. 



But our treatment of grasses would not be complete without men- 

 tioning the most valuable volunteer grass of the South the crab- 

 grass. Those who know crab-grass only as a pest in the North can 

 hardly realize its value here. On the fertile lands of the market- 

 gardens of the coast plain, after the early crops are shipped North, 

 the growers who want hay have only to level the soil nicely and let it 

 lie, and the crab-grass grows with a luxuriance that would astonish 

 those familiar with its puny and weedy growth in the North. We 

 were passing a luxuriant field of crab-grass in the trucking section a 

 few years ago, when our companion remarked that that hay crop 

 would constitute the fourth crop from the field that season. He said 

 that the field had been set in early cabbage plants the fall before. 



