THE PLANT LIFE OF MARYLAND 



general the plan is best developed from the theoretical standpoint 

 at least, in the Midland Zone, where the soil conditions make possi- 

 ble a choice of several types of crops which may be grown in such 

 order as to form a beneficial succession on a given field. 



The theory of crop rotation is that a continued cropping of one 

 kind of plant in some way diminishes the available supply of the 

 particular elements of soil fertility which that plant requires in 

 greatest degree, this loss being met and counteracted by introducing 

 other crops which add available plant food to the soil or at least 

 draw upon the soil materials in different proportion from the first 

 crop. Whether the effect is exactly as stated or not is of secondary 

 importance here, the point being that a succession of crops average 

 better than a long contimiance of a single one, upon a given area of 

 land. Most farmers practise some type of rotation, and the choice 

 of successive crops varies with the section of the State in which the 

 farm may be located. 



Rotations of the Midland and Western Zones are based upon the 

 maintenance of each field for at least two seasons in a clover and 

 timothy sod. In the Midland Zone the typical rotation may be 

 taken as starting with corn ; this is usually followed by wheat in the 

 fall of the same year. After the wheat is off, the stubble is usually 

 plowed, and after a period of fallowing, often omitted, may be again 

 sown in wheat, with timothy and clover, the former seeded with the 

 wheat, the latter the following spring. The field is allowed to re- 

 main in hay for two years, being pastured to some extent after each 

 mowing. After the second year of hay, the sod is usually turned 

 under and corn comes again as the next crop. 



In case the farmer has a permanent pasture to develop at inter- 

 vals, it is usually done as the natural outgrowth of the hay field, 

 the use as pasture coming in as the yield of hay diminishes after a 

 few years of cutting. In those sections where the pastures are nat- 

 ural and do not need to be planted the hay fields are pastured only 

 sufficiently to keep down a too luxuriant aftermath. 



The conditions in parts of the Coastal Zone are such that the 

 clover item is often omitted, on account of the difficulty of securing 

 a crop of this plant. In some cases cow-peas or other legumes of 

 similar type are substituted for the clover, or in a growing number 



