274 



ILLINOIS DAIRYMEN'S ASSOCIATION. 



years ago I put in 65 acres and I drilled them, thought I couldn't 

 do them any other way. And I walked behind that drill and 

 drilled therri. It was a wet season, and it was a pretty expensive 

 lesson. I think one pea out of ten came up. If I had sown those 

 peas broadcast, I would have had five times the amount of stull 

 on that ground. The next year I said, "I am not going to fool with 

 this drill, I will sow the peas broadcast." The ground was so dry 

 when I sowed them and stayed dry and I think some peas were 

 laying there when I cut the grass. 



O : — Don't you think you planted some too deep with that 

 drill ?^ 



A : — Yes sir, that may be so. It was a very wet spring. 

 We would get a chance to work for a day or half a day then it 

 would come on to rain. Now, peas are a peculiar thing. I know 

 a story of a man who planted some beans in his garden and some 

 of his friends asked about his garden. He says, ''Everything is 

 coming along but the beans, but the dammed things keep coming 

 up and I have to push them down every morning." Well cow 

 peas are not peas at all they are beans. You plant a pea in the 

 ground and it sprouts up like corn and we don't care anything 

 about that pea, but you plant a bean, and that bean will lay in 

 the ground just like that and got to come out between these 

 lobes and they will drop off. If you plant that bean in the ground 

 and it can't get up there it will commence twisting up and finally 

 the head of the bean itself will come in there and this sprout will 

 surl up and try to push and push and the next thing you know it 

 lias pushed its head off and it is dead. That is the end of that. 

 There is a whole lot to understand about cow peas and yet we 

 can't get it all. I do believe this, that cow peas are of such a good 

 character for our soil and are undoubtedly the finest milk pro- 

 ducer of anything we can raise, that it is worth all this effort to 

 try and make a successful crop of it. 



DISCUSSION. 



Q : — I think probably you might leave an impression that 

 to sow beans broadcast any year is all right? 



