ANNUAL HAY AND FORAGE CROPS 147 



When planted in drills sufficiently far apart to enable cultivation, 

 cowpeas do best when given frequent, shallow and level cultivation. The 

 earth should not be thrown on the foliage and tillage should cease as soon 

 as the vines begin to run. 



Cowpeas are adapted to short rotations. They may frequently follow 

 an early-maturing crop, such as wheat, oats and early potatoes, thus 

 providing two crops from the land in one season. A rotation of wheat or 

 oats and cowpeas is giving excellent results in portions of Tennessee, 

 Arkansas and Missouri. 



Time and Method of Harvesting. For hay purposes cowpeas should 

 be cut when the first pods begin to ripen. A large growth of vines is some- 

 what difficult to cure. The cut vines should lie in the swath for one day. 

 They should then be placed in windrows w r here they may remain until 

 fully cured. If weather conditions are not most favorable the vines, after 

 remaining one or two days in the windrow, should be put into tall, narrow 

 cocks and left to cure for a week or more. If rains threaten, canvas covers 

 are advised. 



The leaves are the most palatable and nutritious portion of the forage, 

 and every effort should be made to prevent their loss. When so dry that 

 no moisture appears on the stems when tightly twisted in the hands, the 

 hay may be put into stack or mow. 



Harvesting for seed is most cheaply done by machinery. The crop 

 should be cut with the mowing machine or self-rake reaper when half or 

 more of the pods are ripe. When thoroughly dry they may be threshed with 

 the ordinary threshing machine by removing the concaves and running the 

 cylinder at a low speed to prevent breaking the peas. Better results are 

 secured by using a regular cowpea threshing machine. 



Feeding Value and Utilization. Well-cured cowpea hay is superior 

 to red clover and nearly equal to alfalfa hay. It is very high in digestible 

 protein. Experiments relative to its feeding value show that one and one- 

 quarter tons of chopped cowpea hay is equal to one ton of wheat bran. It 

 is a satisfactory roughage for work stock and for beef and milk production. 



SOY BEANS 



Soy beans are adapted to the same soil and climatic conditions as corn. 

 They are most important in the region lying between the best clover and 

 cowpea regions. This is represented by Delaware, Maryland, West Vir- 

 ginia, Virginia, Tennessee and the southern portion of the corn belt. They 

 do well on soils too poor for good corn production, but are not so well 

 adapted to poor soils as the cowpea. They stand drought well. 



Varieties. There are several hundred varieties of soy beans, but only 

 about fifteen are handled by seedsmen. The most important of these are 

 described in the accompanying tabulation. The selection of a variety 

 should be based upon time of maturity as related to the length of season 

 for growth and the purpose for which grown. For seed production, good 



