The home journal. [volume] (Winchester, Tenn.) 1857-1857, 1857-02-20
Rotation of Crops,

II is always better to prevent spe-
cial exhaustion of land than to cure it..
1t is often difficult to discover what the
land really requires, and, therefore, to
cure the evil when it exists. The only
method of preventing it with which we
are yet acquainted, is by the introduce
ton of skillful rotation or alienation
of unlike crops. In adopting such a
rotation, we only copy from nature.
After, perhaps, fifteen or twenty
successive crops of the same kind, the
surface soil through which the roots
are spread becomes so poor in those
substances which the crop especially
requires, that the plant cannot obtain
from it sufficient supply to nourish
and bring to maturity the full-grown
plant, within the time allotted to it in
our climate for its natural growth.
The roots do their best; they collect as
diligently as they can, but winter
comes on, and the growth ends before
the plant is fully matured. In the case
of corn, the first effect of a scarcity, say
of phosphoric acid, is to make the ear
smaller and the number of grains less;
the next to continue the growth into
the winter, and only when a very fine
season occurs to ripen the ear at all.
But suppose we alternate the corn crop
which in its grain carries off phospho-
sic acid, with a hay crop, which re-
quires much silica, or root crop to
which much alkaline matter is neces-
sary-then the one crop would live
upon and remove what the other had
left in greater abundance. Instead of
robbing the soil every year of the same
substance, we should be exhausting it
more equally of all, and we should be
aole, for double the time at least, to
crop it without the risk of it's ceasing
entirely to give us profitable return.
We should gradually work up every
available substance in the soil, whcth-
or such as are naturally present in it,
or such as we have ourselves added
in the form of manure. What is true
of the simple alterations Of corn with
a green crop, is more true still of a
longer and more complicated rotation.
The greater the variety of crops we
grow, the more perfectly do we avail
ourselves ofthe benefits which an ODE
dience to the suggestions ofthis princi-
pie is fitted to confer upon US. No ro-
tation, it is true, however skillful, will
alone prevent the land from becoming
ultimately exhausted. Nothing but
regular and generous manuring will
do this, unless there be, IN springs from
beneath, or in the decaying fragments
of rock mixed with the soil, or in SUBJ
stances brought down from higher
grounds, or in the nature of the rains
that fall upon the land, some perennial
source of those substances which the
crops always carry off from the sail.
But in a skillful rotation there is this
virtue, that land which is subjected to
it cannot be ruined in SO short time
Farm. Journal.
This article is sensible, and we rec.
ommend its truthful suggestion to our
readers. By proper rotation the evil OF
WORKOUT lands may be "indefinitely
postponed" if not entirely Obviated
and the subject is well worthy the at.
tention Of any farmer or planter.
We clip the following from Geor.
gia paper:
NANCE IN SwINE.--Ihavc noticed in
npp If your Lotto ,,on,,, ~ =, ;,,,,,;,,, 60,