FARMING. 7 



land can be disked and prepared so that the oats can go into the 

 ground early in September. Sown at this time, they get well started 

 and tillered before winter and will make in all the coast plain an 

 abundant crop under good farming, and at the usual price for oats in 

 the South will be found to be a profitable crop. As in the case of 

 wheat, the land can at once be sown after harvest with cow-peas for 

 hay and a crop of the finest hay for stock produced. Then if the 

 acid phosphate and potash have been applied to the pea crop this crop 

 will not only be largely increased, but will store still more fertility in 

 the soil for the following crop of cotton, which in this case will need 

 only a similar fertilizer, since the peas will leave abundant nitrogen 

 in the soil. Then crimson clover following the cotton will again 

 increase the capacity of the soil for the production of corn. Peas 

 can also be well sown among the corn, but will have to be mown after 

 the corn is cut in order that the land may be gotten into good shape 

 for the oats. The best variety of oats is the one known as Virginia 

 Grey Winter Turf Oats. . 



CORN. 



Corn grows well in all sections of the State, though in the high 

 mountain plateaus of the northwest section a quick-growing variety 

 is needed, as in the North, for the farms there lie over 3,000 feet 

 above the sea and are mainly devoted to grass. While south of what 

 is called the "Corn Belt," we can grow all over the piedmont and 

 coast regions as heavy crops as are grown anywhere. The scanty 

 crops to be seen in various sections are due, not to the lack of capacity 

 in the soil for the production of corn, but to the careless mode of cul- 

 tivation. In some parts of -the coastal plain there are deep peaty 

 soils of wide area on which great crops of corn are grown year after 

 year just as they are grown in the West. The traveler on the rail- 

 road leading from Norfolk, Va., to Edenton, N. C., seeing the wide- 

 spread corn-fields and the black soil, could well imagine himself on 

 the black lands of Illinois. And these lands are as well adapted to 

 grass and stock as the lands of the West, and when properly farmed 

 will be found among the most productive corn, oat, and grass lands 

 that can be found, while the cotton and truck crops can be increased 

 by the same good farming. These black soils naturally grow up in 

 a great profusion of grasses as soon as left idle, and over half a cen- 

 tury ago the late Edmund Ruffin wrote in the book on eastern North 

 Carolina that in his opinion that coast section was destined to be the 

 greatest stock country on the Atlantic coast, because of the wonder- 

 ful profusion of native grasses. From Ruffin's day down the farmers 

 have been engaged in killing grass for the single culture of corn or 

 cotton. When the great swamps in the coast plain are finally drained 

 and opened up, as sections of them have been, there will be found 

 the greatest corn section of its size in the United States. All over 

 cotton and tobacco sections corn has been looked upon merely in the 

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