158 SOILING CROPS AND THE SILO. 



in one abundantly supplied with humus. The 

 alluvial soils of narrow valleys and river bottoms 

 furnish for them a most congenial home. The same 

 is true of the deep rich black loams of the virgin 

 prairie and of slough lands. They also revel in the 

 muck soils of swamps that have been drained. They 

 can be grown on rich loams in fine form, and good 

 crops can even be obtained from clays of no little 

 density, but not without much labor. Fair crops 

 can also be grown on all lands well adapted to the 

 production of Indian corn, but more fertility, 

 relatively, is required to grow a good crop of 

 cabbage than will suffice to grow a good crop 

 of corn. The lands with least adaptation for 

 cabbage are those which are light, leachy and 

 low in fertility. Good cabbage soils are usually 

 if not always underlaid with clay, not too near 

 and yet not too distant from the surface. Good 

 crops may be grown on upland soils naturally 

 dry in character, but only by the aid of abun- 

 dant fertilizing. 



Place in the Rotation. — The cabbage crop like 

 all other crops that are given much cultivation should 

 be made a cleaning crop. It should invariably be 

 followed by a crop of grain of the non-leguminous 

 order, unless there are good reasons for doing other- 

 wise. The grain crop should have grass seeds sown 

 along with it to produce hay or pasture. But owing 

 to the peculiar power which cabbage, in common 

 with all plants of this family, have to feed upon 

 decaying vegetable matter, there is a peculiar fitness 

 in growing a crop of cabbage on overturned sod. 

 Any kind of sod will suffice, but of course, the more 



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