The comet. [volume] (Jackson, Miss.) 1877-1882, 1880-07-17
Level Cultivation OF cotton.


lAnu anu nOWc
The May number of the Planters
Journal contains letter from Maj. G.
V. Young, of Waverly, Miss, describ.
ing the success of Kansas farmer,
who, making his first experiment hi
cotton growing In the summer of 1879
achieved surprising results. The pres
ent year this Kansas man has under
taken TO cultivate by himself forty
acres In cotton and fifteen acres In
corn, and to do II has provided himself
with sufficient teams, q sulky pillow, a
rotary drop seed planter with check
sower attached, and walking cult
vator.
"The Kansas man." says the Ma
jor, "On his arrival in Clay county,
was struck with the farming imple-
ments preented him to make crop,
but determined, if the negroes had
always used them, he could stand
them until he could do better, and he
bedded his land with the Cary plow."
But before doing so, he got rid of
both corn and cotton stalks in a man
ner new to that section. He cut Il pole
twenty-fOur feet long and seven inches
in diameter, and hitched span of
horses TO each end, and driving them
over the land when it was frozen hard,
cut them off smooth with the earth,
after which they were handled with
ease. After his land was well bedded,
he ran Il harrow across it to make the
surface as level as possible. The cot
ton was then planted, and when up
and ready to chop, he ran across 1T
with Il harrow, hitching to the imple-
ment in such a way that the teeth
would cut out the cotton plants every
eight or ten inches.
When he was about to do this, he
was warned by his neighbors that he
would destroy his crop, and the remark
was made, "You can safely harrow
wheat, but it will not do with cotton"
But the result was. the stand was per-
feet; the land loosened up by the har-
row, was in fine condition the cotton
grew splendidly, and the hands who
chopped it to Il stand said they could
do more work and with more ease TO
themselves, after this cultivation,
than they had ever been able to do
before, The cultivation after this,
was done with a walking cultivation,
except at the last he substituted Il
small steel buzzard wing sweep, i'll
place of the outside shovel, which left
a depression in the centre of the rows
for water furrow.
ain Justice to the Kansas farmer"
continued the Major, 1--WE should
state that the spring was backward,
that he did not begin to plant cotton
till April IA, when he should have
begun by April LIST, and that drouth
of great severity came soon after MD
summer. Nevertheless, he cultivated
16 acres in cotton, 5! acres in oats and
% acres in corn, making Z! ba'es of
cotton, 800 bushels of corn and $50
bushels of oats, and up to the time of
picking cotton had expended only $l5
for work"
This is certainly good showing for
the level system Of cultivating cotton;
but the writer does not give the reader
to understand that the work was done
on u perfectly level piece of land, and
further, that in order to make the new
system Il success, only level lands can
be uniformly treated in that way, or
until some measures are invented by
which lands with IAN inclination to
slope can be prevented from washing
in the course Of the crop season on
account of heavy rains.
But where there is little orpo slope
or inclination of the surface on river
bottoms, all through the cotton States
and over the vast alluvial tracts in
the valley of the Mississippi river,
within the boundaries Of the States of
Arkansas, Mississippi and louisiana,
and in the prairies of Mississippi and
Texas, there is every reason to think
that the surface cultivation of cotton,
will, sooner or later become general,
and be attended with as good results
as in the Clay county case.