ON THE ROTATION OF CROPS. 79 



and most successful farmers in the best cultivated parts of eastern 

 Pennsylvania. After a grass or clover field has been mowed 

 one year, and the next succeeding year been used for pasture, 

 it is broken up or ploughed, either late in the autumn or early 

 in the following spring, and planted with Indian corn, which 

 is cut off in the fall and the field ploughed as before, either in 

 the fall or following spring, and sowed with oats or barley; and 

 immediately after the harvesting of the oats or barley, the ground 

 is ploughed, manured and sown with wheat. 



"Grass seed should be sowed on the wheat early in the 

 spring, and if timothy is intended to accompany the clover, it 

 had better be sowed in the fall, and the clover, orchard grass, 

 or herd grass seed sowed early in the spring; and be sure not 

 to be too sparing of the grass seed, for much loss is often sus- 

 tained by not putting it on thick enough, particularly as the 

 clover in some soils is often injured by the winter frosts, and 

 then it is important to have plenty of timothy, orchard grass, 

 or herd grass roots to supply its place. 



"The spring following the wheat crop, plaster of paris should 

 be applied, say one bushel to the acre; most of our best farmers 

 consider this to produce as great an effect as any larger quantity. 

 This season cut the grass for hay, and the next succeeding season 

 pasture the grass, and in the autumn it may be again ploughed 

 for corn the following season, and proceed with the same round 

 of crops again in the same order; but if the farm should contain 

 a sufficient number of fields, and the grass be well set, it may 

 be pastured a second year before it is broken up for corn. The 

 first is a five years rotation, the latter six. 



"The best time for applying lime or marl in this rotation of 

 crops, is believed to be in the fall, after the wheat crop; ap- 

 plied as a top-dressing on the young grass or clover. In this 

 mode of application, its effects are very conspicuous in the in- 

 creased quantity of grass the first season, and when the sward 

 is broken up rer corn, the effect of the lime or marl, on that 

 crop, will be much greater than if they were applied to it the 

 same season. " 



