340 SOILS 



treatment will make a marked improvement in the 

 soil. Both of these crops thrive on very poor 

 land. The cowpea has worked miracles on thou- 

 sands of acres of Southern land; it is a great 

 blessing to Southern agriculture. 



Crimson clover deserves third place in the list of 

 soil-improvers. It is grown chiefly along the 

 Atlantic sea-board from Massachusetts to Georgia, 

 and is used almost entirely as a cover crop. It is 

 sown from the last of July to the first of October 

 at the rate of fifteen to twenty pounds of seed 

 per acre, either between rows of standing crops, as. 

 corn or cotton, or after the crop has been narvested. 

 The peculiar value of crimson clover lies in its 

 ability to grow late into the winter, and to begin 

 growth again early the next spring, thus accumulat- 

 ing much herbage before the spring plowing. It 

 gathers nitrogen most industriously during this 

 jperiod. It makes good winter pasture. In the 

 South, crimson clover complements the cowpea, 

 since it grows at a season when the cowpea does 

 not. In the North it is equally at home and is 

 valued highly. 



Alfalfa is the greatest soil-improver of arid 

 farming in the West. At the Wyoming Experi- 

 ment Station land on which alfalfa had been grown 

 produced $16 worth more of potatoes and oats per 

 acre than similar land that had not been in alfalfa, 

 and this increase was secured at no cost. In late 

 years the culture of alfalfa has extended over many 

 parts of the East. Wherever it can be grown to 

 advantage, as a part of the farm rotation, alfalfa is 

 one of the very best means of maintaining fertility, 

 although it is grown primarily as a forage or hay 

 crop. It prefers an open suosoil, being the most 

 deep-rooting of any farm crop; this makes it of 



