' 



Forage Plants at the South. 



a clover lot to provide hay, or cut green food 

 for their cows and horses. Such persons will 

 find lucerne to be much more valuable than 

 clover, both as to quantity and quality of the 

 food produced. 



Much space has been devoted to this plant 

 because it is so little known among our farm- 

 ers, and because its cultivation would be of 

 such great benefit to them. 



INDIAN CORN. 



Corn is spoken of not as a grain. Nor in 

 reference to its fodder pulled in the ordinary 

 way. Few farmers understand the actual cost 

 of fodder pulling It will appear when they 

 send a gang of hands into a one hundred acre 

 field to pull fodder, every blade of every stalk 

 must be manipulated or handled. Contrast 

 this tedious, toilsome, costly process with 

 saving a crop of hay by improved machinery, 

 by aid of which the grass is not touched by 

 human hands from the cutting to the loading 

 into the barn. 



Strictly as a forage plant corn possesses a 

 great value. It may be ranked next to 

 lucerne, which it exceeds in quantity, but does 

 not equal in quality. Ten tons of cured fodder 

 may be procured from an acre of land. 



To obtain a full crop, the soil should be 

 heavily manured, and ploughed very deep. 

 The rows should be three feet apart, and the 

 corn sowed at the rate of three bushels to the 

 acre. One ploughing and hoeing is generally 

 sufficient. The corn should be cut when it is 

 in tassel. If the weather be good it may lay 

 upon the ground twenty-four hours. Stalks 

 should have been left standing at such dis- 

 tances that the cut stalks may be piled around 

 them in the shape of a stack. They may be 

 fastened by tying them with a stalk near the 

 top. Rain will not injure them in this posi- 

 tion, and in a week or ten days they may be 

 hauled into the barn- 



These corn-stalks cut up with a straw-cutter 

 make very good winter forage for horses and 

 cattle, though not so good as hay. Their 

 principal use at the North is for soiling milch 

 cows in the summer. The necessity for this 

 arises from the fact that at that season grass 

 in their pastures is old and dry, and cows fail 

 in their milk on it. This necessity does not 

 exist with us, as at the same season our crab- 

 grass affords a frjph bite. Very sensible farm- 

 ers at the South have estimated the crab-grass 

 pastures of a fair season on stubble land as 

 being nearly equal in value to the preceding 

 small grain crop. 



In the absence of a sufficient supply of hay, 

 it is very proper for the Southern farmer to 

 have some acres in sowed corn. The objection 

 to this practice is that it must be repeated 

 every year. This involves manual labor and 

 expense, whereas a meadow lasts for ye^rs, and 

 requires no labor but the harvest. In sowing 

 corn for forage, it is preferable to use North- 



ern or Western seed onrn, as the stalks are not 

 as large and hard as the Southern varieties. 



THE FIELD PEA. 



A variety of the pea for forage purposes 

 should be selected which runs very much to 

 vine. In this respect the varieties of the pea 

 differ materially, some growing in bunches, 

 others in rich land, matting the ground with 

 vines. The peas should be sown in drills 

 three feet apart and worked sufficiently to 

 keep them clean. The vines should be cut 

 when a few of the peas have matured, but when 

 most of the pods are green. A short-bladed 

 scythe should be used in cutting them. They 

 are saved without difficulty by the same pro- 

 cess which was recommended in the case of 

 lucerne, only the pea vines should remain a 

 day or two longer in the cock. The amount 

 of valuable winter forage which can be ob- 

 tained from an acre of rich land in peas is 

 very great. The writer has found the follow- 

 ing an easy and efficacious method of saving 

 pea vine hay. Cut pine or other poles, about 

 as long as an ordinary fodder pole, leaving 

 the branches two to three feet long. Sink the 

 pole securely in the ground, and stack the 

 vines when quite green about this pole. The 

 short branches left will secure sufficient ven- 

 ^ilation and prevent mildew. 



THE VETCH. 



There are two general varieties of this 

 plant, the winter and summer vetch. The lat- 

 ter is of very little use to us, as it will not for 

 summer soiling yield as large an amount of 

 green forage as corn. The winter vetch will 

 be found quite useful for soiling purposes very 

 early in the spring. For this use it comes 

 earlier than lucerne, being ready for the first 

 cutting during the first warm spell in Feb- 

 ruary. The seeds should be sown early in 

 August, allowing one bushel to the acre. On 

 well-manured land the vetch, or tare, yields a 

 large amount of early-cut food, or it may be 

 made into nutritious hay. 



The English attach much importance to the 

 vetch. But with the single exception of early 

 green food, they are hardly equal to our com- 

 mon field pea. 



There is a small vetch or vetchling which is 

 sometimes introduced upon Southern farms 

 with Northern grass seed. On rich land it 

 will grow two to three feet high, blossoms 

 even before blue grass, and is very useful for 

 early pasture. As soon as ripe the pods burst 

 open, and the seeds are scattered. Wherever 

 this plant appears it should be encouraged. 



More than twenty- five years ago, the writer 

 observed a very luxuriant bunch of native 

 vetch growing on a plantation wharf on 

 Cooper River, in South Carolina, and directed 

 the attention of the proprietor to it as a val- 

 uable plant. But he was a rice planter, and in 

 that day no man among rice or cotton planters 



