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is in a proper condition to thresh. This will save the trouble and 

 expense of stacking. 



Some farmers prefer to sow in the chaff, believing that a better 

 stand of clover is thus secured. Usually about thirty bushels in 

 the chaff are considered equivalent to one of cleaned seed. Of 

 course this will depend greatly upon the yield of seed, and experi- 

 ments ought to be made to determine the relative amount to sow 

 when in chaff. 



CLOVER AS A PREPARATORY CROP FOR WHEAT. 



No question at the present day pertaining to agriculture is more 

 deeply interesting to the farmers of Tennessee than how to increase 

 the yield of the wheat crop per acre, for upon this depends the 

 profits of this standard crop, one probably more generally grown in 

 the State than any other. It has also been noted that a soil well 

 suited to clover is generally well adapted to wheat, but not until the 

 painstaking investigations of Dr. Voelcker, of England, was the 

 fact established that the clover plant, by increasing the amount of 

 available nitrogen in the surface soil, is the very best forerunner 

 for wheat, unlocking, as it were, the elements in the soil necessary 

 to a full and perfect development of the wheat crop. 



Prof. Way has established the fact that the carbonate of ammo- 

 nia of rain-water and of manures are so absorbed and so firmly 

 fixed by the soil that no free ammonia can be present in it. 

 Neither pure nor carbonic acid water can extract this fixed ammo- 

 nia from the soil. It must be extracted by the roots of plants. A 

 plant, therefore, with extensive root ramifications, such as clover, 

 will extract a much larger quantity than those plants with feebler 

 roots. The clover roots bring this ammonia or nitrogen to the sur- 

 face, and on their decay these nitrogenous matters are converted 

 into nitrates in which the wheat plant finds a most congenial food. 

 In addition to this, the leaves formed by clover contain a large 

 amount of nitrogenous matter, and these are dropped upon the sur- 

 face, increasing the amount of nitrogen available for wheat or other 

 crops. 



