6 FARMING. 



will largely increase the value of the 1,000 pounds of cotton per acre, 

 while the auxiliary crops of wheat, oats, and hay leave the cotton crop 

 almost a free money crop. Wheat, therefore, should always enter 

 into the rotation of a farm in the red-clay uplands of the piedmont 

 section. In this same section there are broad river bottom-lands, 

 such as those along the Yadkin and Catawba rivers, which have 

 been for generations carelessly cultivated in corn only, but are among 

 the best of wheat lands and can well be taken into the rotation sug- 

 gested, and from their great natural fertility can soon be made to 

 produce immense crops. In the years before the Civil War the white 

 wheat of North Carolina was famous and the States north of us as 

 far north as Maryland were in the habit of sending here for seed 

 wheat. Since the war the exclusive devotion to cotton as the only 

 means for recovering the losses of the war has led to the neglect of 

 the wheat crop. But the piedmont soils are naturally as well adapted 

 to it as ever,, and it only needs good rotative farming to demonstrate 

 their capacity. While the coastal plain, with its lighter soils, is not 

 so well adapted to wheat as the piedmont country, nevertheless good 

 farmers have made fine crops of wheat in that section on the heavier 

 soils. A few years ago Mr. Daughtridge of Edgecombe County, after 

 harvesting a good crop of cotton, sowed wheat on the cotton land and 

 made a crop of more than 30 bushels per acre. This would not be 

 considered a poor crop by any means in the best wheat-growing sec- 

 tions of Maryland, where wheat is the main money crop. But in 

 the coastal plain and on the lighter soil the crop that can more profita- 

 bly take the place of wheat is 



WINTER OATS. 



From Pennsylvania southward there is no crop more uncertain 

 than the spring-sown crop of oats, and in the South it is uniformly 

 of little value, since the heat of summer strikes it before maturity 

 and the grain is small and light. But with winter oats the case is 

 different. They make their growth during the cool season of the year 

 and mature before the hottest weather comes, and thus they keep up 

 to and often above the standard weight per bushel, and under good 

 culture yield large crops. Crops of 60 to 75 bushels per acre have 

 been grown under good rotation conditions. While winter oats can 

 be grown all over the piedmont country, wheat is there far more cer- 

 tain and profitable. But in the coast plain the reverse is true, and the 

 oats should more generally be grown, except where soil conditions 

 especially favor the wheat. The turning under of a crop of crimson 

 clover on which the manure of the farm has been spread broadcast 

 for corn, and the subsequent culture of the corn crop, makes the best 

 possible preparation for the crop of winter oats. Early sowing is of 

 great importance with this crop, and as the early planted corn can 

 be cut easily here by the last of August and put into shock-rows, the 



