CULTURE OUTSIDE CORN BELT 167 



The double row or alternating method of spac- 

 ing has occasionally been successfully employed at the 

 south, the hills being spaced on either side of the 

 manured furrow, three or four feet apart from each 

 other, on the same side of the row, and so alternating 

 as to reduce the diagonal line between them to half that 

 distance. The rows vary in width from six to seven 

 feet from center to center. A row of cowpeas always 

 occupies the middles. This method of spacing has 

 never particularly commended itself. 



The Cowpea in Com Land — The cowpea is, at the 

 south, the inseparable companion of the corn plant, and 

 altogether the most valuable legume for restorative 

 purposes known to the agriculturist of any land. It 

 is planted either in the middles between the corn rows 

 and cultivated with the crop ; dropped alternately with 

 the corn between the hills, or sown broadcast on laying 

 by. It thus serves the double purpose of furnishing its 

 quota of valuable food material at harvest time, either 

 in peas or vines, and of economically improving the 

 soil — physically, by the organic matter which its struc- 

 ture supplies, and chemically, by the enormous store of 

 nitrogen fixed by its root system. 



But the most important function Or servitude of 

 the cowpea consists in the part it plays in the now well 

 recognized triennial rotation system, by means of which 

 southern agriculture is gradually being elevated to a 

 higher and more remunerative plane. Under this sys- 

 tem corn is made to follow cotton, small grain (oats or 

 wheat) to succeed corn, and after the grain is har- 

 vested in June the area is broadcast with cowpeas, 

 which are cut in September and converted into either 

 hay or silage, the stubble only remaining to accom- 

 plish the work of renovation. This, however, it does 

 so effectually that thereby an amount of organic matter 

 and potential nitrogen is supplied, acquired after ninety 



