CHAPTER X 



LEGUMINOUS FORAGE CROPS 



EvEBY farmer is now familiar with the group 

 of leguminous crops. This group deserves even 

 more attention than it is now receiving, because of 

 the relations of the plants to nitrogen. The plants 

 belonging to the legume, family include the various 

 clovers, peas and beans. All these plants have a 

 source of supply of plant- food that is not acces- 

 sible to most other plants, particularly not to the 

 Cereal plants. It is well known that after a crop 

 of clover the land, as a rule, produces a better 

 growth of corn, or other cereals, than when such a 

 crop follows a grain or a grass crop. It was thought 

 for a long time that this improvement in land was 

 due to the greater proportion of root substance in 

 the surface soil, because the plants root deep and 

 gather food from the lower layers, storing it in 

 the thickened roots. The soil improvement was 

 not attributed to their power of gathering nitrogen 

 from the air until careful experiments showed that 

 the soU nitrogen was not consumed but rather in- 

 creased by their growth. The fact that clover 

 gives better returns as a stock feed than an equiva- 

 lent weight of timothy was also known for a long 



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