SOIL FERTILITY 157 



productivity of peanut soils could not be maintained if sufficient ferti- 

 lizers are supplied to compensate for the nutrients removed by the crop. 

 Yet, such a program of continuous cropping and heavy fertilization would 

 undoubtedly not be economical. Furthermore, even though the fertility 

 could be maintained, it would not be advisable to make successive plant- 

 ings of peanuts on the same land because of the likelihood of more severe 

 disease and insect infestation. 



Crops Grown in Rotation With Peanuts 



A number of crops such as corn, cotton, tobacco, soybeans, potatoes, 

 grain sorghum, truck crops, cereals and legumes are well suited for use 

 in rotations with peanuts. While there is little information relative to ro- 

 tation requirements, it is generally recommended that peanuts not be 

 grown on the same soil more than once every 3 or 4 years. 



Beattie and Beattie (33) of the U. S. Department of Agriculture have 

 suggested that peanut rotations should include at least two soil-building 

 crops, one of which is a winter cover crop. Batten (30) considers the 

 chief requirement of a peanut rotation to be that it should furnish a con- 

 siderable amount of organic matter to be incorporated with the soil. Gore 

 (54) at the Georgia Experiment Station reports that peanuts do espe- 

 cially well following well-fertilized cotton, tobacco or truck crops. This 

 investigator reports that the only objection to rotating cotton with pea- 

 nuts is the tendency for Sclerotium rolfsii to be more severe. It was re- 

 ported that growers also found considerable disease in peanuts following 

 cowpeas. The North Carolina Station has recommended that peanuts 

 should not follow soybeans on soils where Sclerotium rolfsii is present. 



The majority of the experimental work with peanuts indicates that 

 little response may be expected from fertilizing peanuts if they are grown 

 in rotation with other well-fertilized crops. The results from five rotation 

 experiments conducted in North Carolina ( 19, 20) for a period of 6 years 

 show that the application of 100 pounds of muriate of potash to cotton 

 preceding peanuts resulted in as high peanut yields as did the application 

 of SO pounds to each crop. Furthermore, the yields of cotton were in- 

 creased upon receiving all of the potash. The result of these and other 

 (16, 18, 100) experiments suggests that instead of fertilizing peanuts 

 directly it would be better to use relatively large amounts of fertilizers 

 with other crops in the rotation which would respond to the additional 

 fertilizer. 



Experiments conducted by the Alabama Station (2) indicate that the 

 normally recommended rates of fertilizing a crop such as cotton are inade- 



