288 FIELD CROPS FOR THE COTTON-BELT 



fertilizer attachment to the grain drill at the time of sowing 

 the seed. Precautions should be used, however, to prevent 

 large amounts of cotton-seed meal or potash salts from 

 coming in direct contact with the seed. Otherwise ger- 

 mination might be injured. 



Heavy apphcations of manure directly to the oat crop 

 are not advisable. An excellent practice is to apply the 

 manure as a Ught top-dressing to the oats in late fall or 

 early winter. 



350. Place in the rotation. — Wherever possible, oats 

 should follow a cultivated crop in the rotation. In the 

 southern systems of rotation oats usually follow corn 

 rather than cotton as the corn is removed from the land 

 rather early in the fall. An excellent practice is to sow 

 cowpeas in the corn to be used as a seed- crop and the 

 .vines plowed under. At the Alabama Station a yield 

 of 13.7 bushels of oats to the acre was secured on land 

 following corn, 19.9 bushels where a crop of cowpeas had 

 been plowed under, and 30 bushels to the acre following 

 peanuts from which the nuts had been picked. Where 

 moisture conditions will permit, the soil should be plowed 

 or disked as soon as the oats are harvested and cowpeas 

 sown for hay, pasture or green-manure. In most sections 

 of the cotton-belt the cowpeas thus sown can be utiUzed as 

 outlined above in sufficient time for the land to be seeded 

 to oats again in the fall. Following this system and plow- 

 ing under the cowpea vines, the Arkansas Station found 

 that the increased yield of oats was greater than where 

 400 pounds of complete commercial fertiUzer to the acre 

 were applied.^ On most soils, this one-year rotation would 

 require the application of mineral fertilizers, preferably 

 to the cowpea crop. 



1 Ark. Agr. Exp. Sta., Bui. 66. 



