FARMING. 5 



the general farmer in wheat, oats, grasses and cattle, and for the 

 fruit-grower in the long-leaf pine country who washes to grow 

 peaches on a large scale, while the mountain country is destined to 

 be soon recognized as the greatest apple section of the United States. 

 In the following pages we will treat of the various crops and the 

 regions of the State best suited to them. 



WHEAT. 



The soil surveys of the Department of Agriculture in Washington 

 have demonstrated that our upland red-clay soils are practically 

 identical with the best wheat soils in the country. They call the red- 

 clay "Cecil Clay," from the fact that they first met with it in the 

 northern part of Cecil County in Maryland, where on it the finest 

 crops of wheat and grass produced in this country are grown. Cecil 

 County hay is the standard hay in the Baltimore market. That this 

 red clay here is capable of making as good crops of wheat here as in 

 Maryland has been abundantly proved, though the general neglect of 

 wheat for exclusive cotton growing has led people to think that wheat 

 is hardly worth attention as a sale crop. This impression is due, 

 not to the land, but to the kind of farming that has been done. All the 

 rolling uplands of the piedmont section (and this means the greater 

 part of the State) are admirably adapted to wheat growing, clover, 

 and the feeding of cattle. One Ohio farmer who came to the pied- 

 mont country from the blue-grass, said recently that he has better 

 summer pasture here than in Ohio, since the blue-grass dries up in 

 the summer heat, while here the natural growth of the Japan clover, 

 that has spread all over the piedmont country, is at its best in 

 the hot summer weather, and cattle thrive on it as they do not on the 

 blue-grass at that season. This man is a large breeder of the Polled 

 Angus cattle, and is well satisfied with his change. With a rotation 

 consisting of corn, with all the home-made manure, followed by 

 wheat, with simply a good application of the cheap acid phosphate, 

 and the wheat followed at once with a crop of cow-peas for hay and 

 the pea stubble prepared for cotton the next season, with a liberal 

 application of fertilizer, and crimson clover sown among the cotton, 

 the soil will rapidly improve, for then there will be a clover sod to 

 plow under with the manure for the corn and the land will be in the 

 best possible condition for the following wheat crop, and the peas 

 after the wheat will not only give a large amount of valuable feed 

 for stock, but the stubble will be the best possible preparation for the 

 cotton crop. We know of one farmer, who is not in the best wheat 

 section, but in the best cotton section, who has been practising this 

 mode of farming, and last season (1904) he made 100 bales of cot- 

 ton on 50 acres. Even at the price for cotton as we now write (about 

 seven and a half cents per pound), what money crop can compare 

 with cotton when produced in this way, for the value of the seed 



