The star of Pascagoula. [volume] (Pascagoula, Miss.) 1873-1878, 1877-06-22
Restoration of the Soil.

DIR. E. NJ. Pendleton of Georgia, in
writing on the above subject, says; We
write in the interest of cotton planters,
Ono other class, men who find them
selves with plenty of poor land without
laborers, and who desire to know how to
make mule feed in order to grow cotton,
eratively, and ssyet gradually . improve
their lands.
Admitting our postulate, that humus
is the first principle exhausted from a
worn soil, and next to it nitrogen and
then phosphoric acid, how are those to
be restored, so as to make the soil as
productive as ever? Without recon-
mending any regular rotation of crops,
my plan is as follows:
Plant cotton in fresh lands, as long as
there is sufficient vegetable matter in the
soil to produce good, healthy plants with
out rust, applying from one to two hun
bred pounds of good, soluble n%itrophos-
phate, with a view, not so much to i'm
prove the land, as to make a remu-
erative crop. This application will in
crease the crop from seventy-tive to one
hundred per cent. on production every
yeal, and from one to five hundred per
cent, on investment, according to the
season, cultivation and the price of cot
ton, and leave in the soil considerable
ph~osphoric acid for the next crop.
Wherever the land is evidently meas.
urably exhausted of the vegetable matter
(which is known by rust in the cotton,
small weed, early maturity of fruit,
great susceptibility to drOuth, etc.,---lt
must be changed from cotton to some
humus producing crop. The most profit
able to the planter is the oat crop, be-
cause, while it makes more humus, it
gives him more mule feed for the labor
than any other plant. Corn and wheat
may, however, be used with good results
in lands not too much exhausted. But
a small grain crop is essential every few
years, as corn is itself, to some extent, a
Misunderstanding plant.
We SOW oats, then first, to make mus
Gle to produce cotton and second, to
grow humus, as food for the cotton itself.
In order to do this, instead of applying
your cotton seed to corn after it has been
heated, and half of the nitrogen lost, put
it on with your oats, sowing from
October to January, as occasion serves,
blowing in the oats and cotton seed
together with a turning shovel, so as to
protect the roots as much as possible
from freezes. Apply from twenty to
fifty bushels of cotton seed, according to
their abundance, per acre, and the
nitrogen in the seed will not only make
a good crop and leave a heavy stubble,
but cause a luxuriant crop of grass and
weed to spring up, which, turned in, II
possible, before it goes to seed, will give
you in the soil for the next cotton crop,
not only a fine supply of humus, but
more nitrogen than you could haul out
during winter, if you had nothing else
to do, and an inexhaustible supply OF
stable manure at your command.
You now prepare and plant this stub
BILE in cotton the succeeding year, with
the usual quantity of a good nitro
phosphate, in order to supply the mani
fest deficiency of nitrogen and phosphorl'
acid in every worn soil not that thest
elements have been exhausted from oul
soils as yet, but existing as they do, t
some extent, in unassimilated and insol
uble proportions they must be replen
ished by enough prepared by science tt
supply the deficiency.
A soil well supplied with humus By
this rotation of crops, should be planted
two years in cotton, as the first year tn,
finer stems and leaves are sufficient,
converted into humus to be appropriated
as plant food, leaving the coarser stalk
and weeds TO come into play the secon'
year. Thus, a rotation of two years il
cotton. and one in Oats-applying cottOl
seed and guano as indicated, will Civ
remunerative crops and keep the sol
supplied with the three great principle
which has been and are being exhauste
from it, viz: humus, nitrogen, and phoi
phoric acid.
The Household.
GINGER BEER.--Take one gallon {