4 
H. G. Hastings & Co., Seedsmen, Atlanta. Georgia. 
Not An All Cotton Farm 
You may have Kotton the idea that the Hastiniis Farm Is an “all 
t'ottoii ’ farm from the illustrations on the previous pages. It's not. 
" hile we know that cotton at 10 cents per pound or above is the most 
proUtable staple crop in the world when rightly handled, yet the right 
way to handle it is not to plant too many acres in cotton. Our idea has 
always been not more acres in cotton, but more cotton per acre. We have 
always preached that and we try in our own operations to practice what 
we preach. 
The Hastings Farm in Troup County, Georgia contains 3,140 acres. 
The crops on it are divided about as follows; 1,0U0 acres in cotton. I,0u0 
acres in corn and grain crops, 1,000 acres in hay and forage crops, 
with the balance left for pastures. 
On the Hastings Farm it is always the rule to make enough hay 
and grain to feed every head of work’stock without buying a dollar’s 
worth from one year's end to another. While thousands of busnels of corn 
and grain are taken off every year for seed purposes yet we would con¬ 
sider it a disgrace to have to go out and buy grain for our work stock. 
These crops are steadily rotated and cotton usually gets on a piece of 
ground only once in three years. Every pound of manure possible is made 
and saved on the place. For the present the thinner spots on the uplands 
are getting this manure, as well as all that U’e can buy, but we are not 
going to let the bottom lands run down. 
Plenty of commercial fertilizers are used on the Hastings Farms, 
but we find that w’e can get practically double results from the commer¬ 
cial fertilizers or guano when used in connection with stable manure. 
Plenty of manure worked into your soil as well as ours means an increase 
in production in almost any Southern crop of 100 to 200 per cent. It’s nut 
a question of whether we can afford to use manure. The plain facts are 
that we can’t afford not to use it. Big crops of green stuff turned under 
entirely help but we prefer manure. 
Now you may be wondering what the talk above ab rut rotation of 
crops and manure, etc., has got to do with the seed business. To the 
seed dealer and merchant who knows nothing about the seeds he is sell¬ 
ing except the price, such things means nothing. To us, who are con¬ 
stantly working to produce better seed and better varieties and to the 
man who wants to plant seed that will give him the best of results it 
means a great deal. We find, that unless we rotate our crops and get our 
soil in the best of condition, either by plowing under crops of peas, soja 
beans, velvet beans, etc., or else supply the humus or vegetable mat¬ 
ter through manure, our seed crops will not be right either in quality or 
quantity. We can’t get seed corn of the kind we want and you ought to 
THE HASTIISGS FARM 
have out of crops turning 15 to 25 bushels per acre; or good cotton seed 
out of half bale per acre cotton. Neither can we afford, as a business prop¬ 
osition, to have low yielding crops on our farm and neither can you. 
That’s exactly where this kind of work on the Hastings Farms comes 
in. All this plant breeding work being done by our expert, Mr. Starr, 
will be practically valueless unless the costly stock seed which he pro¬ 
duces has right treatment when grown for a seed crop before it is sent to 
you. Two or three years treatment such as much of the average crop¬ 
ping system gives will knock the value of years of careful plant breeding 
out and it would soon be of little more value than common seed. The 
Hastings combination is scientific plant or seed breeding followed by 
crops grown under right condition.s 
A SM.VEE SECTIOM OF A 100-x\CRE FIELD OF CORN ON 
