ROTATION OF CROPS 27! 



stance, wheat if in the fall and corn if in the spring. 

 Every crop that follows a legume likes the nitrogen that 

 has been stored in the soil by it. It likes, too, the stubble 

 and roots that were plowed under for the humus and for 

 food they provide. It matters not the kind of crop : it is 

 benefited by the legume, for little nitrogen was used and 

 the roots fed and grew in a different layer of the soil than 

 their predecessors. If corn or wheat is sown, some other 

 crop can follow it; it can be the same or a different 

 legume again, or it can be cotton (if in the cotton belt) or 

 oats or alfalfa or potatoes: just whatever fits best into 

 the scheme or what is most needed for your style of 

 farming. 



When you give consideration to each crop in this way, 

 you help both the crop and yourself; you help the crop 

 by allowing it the kind of food it likes best; you help 

 yourself by getting more profit from the better yield 

 secured. And this is good farming: to study your crop 

 and to get its confidence. 



All plants exhaust the soil. Since plants exhaust the 

 soil, it is evident that continuous cropping with no com- 

 mensurate returns leads to a depleted condition of the 

 soil. The mineral elements, you know, come from the 

 soil and from the soil only. 



Continuous cropping the same crop year after year 

 calls for certain elements constantly : but it is a very 

 tiresome affair. Of course, if the supply be maintained, 

 or if there be an inexhaustible supply of mineral elements 

 in the soil that never lose their availability and never 

 become carried away by drainage waters, and never get 

 locked into insoluble chemical compounds, and if humus 

 (the very life of the soil) be not burned out, then it may 

 not be necessary to rotate crops. 



But the case is otherwise, as New England well knows ; 



