The Bossier banner. [volume] (Bellevue, Bossier Parish, La.) 1859-1952, 1889-03-28
SOUTHERN AGRICULTURAL.
Cotton neutrality-suspicious. Grow
ing.

Cotton Seed Terracing--Grass Grow
ing.
Cotton seed is the best and cheapest
manure that the Southern farmer can
use. So why sell your cotton seed
when crushed and used with lot ma
nure there is no better or cheaper fer
tilizer, and even with this compost.
acids or phosphates render them still
more ef1cacious. Selling your cotton
seed even, at fifteen and twenty-five
cents a bushel, and replacing them
with expensive, doubtful commercial
manures, is poor economy, especially
when you risk the chances of exchang-
ing seed, which you know to be good
fertilizer, for an article which is of
doubtful utility. The oil of the
cotton seed is becoming in great
demand for manufacturing lard.
That should not concern the farm
ers, for they should raise their own
hogs and make their own meat and
lard, and then they will have lard
which they know to be pure and good,
and if they have more than they need,
they can sell it and supply others with
lard they know to be pure and good
and get a good price for it. This
process would be more advantageous
and profitable to the farmers than SELL
ing their seed at low prices and buying
their fertilizers at high prices. In
summing it up, it may be put down as
penny-wise and pound-foolish trans
action on the part of the farmer, when
taking into consideration the uses that
cotton seed are fit for: first as a fer
tilizer, then as food for cattle, and
then for lubricating oil, and also for
lard. Why, fifteen or twenty-five cents
a bushel is not half its value. It
amounts to almost giving away some
thing for nothing when it comes to ex-
changing cotton-seed for commercial
fertilizers. Who have made the most
money from commercial fertilizers, the
manufacturers or the farmers? Most
certainly the manufacturers. The
while the farmers-the best or most
successful among them-have barely
held their own. A vast majority, no
doubt, were loosers by it. Let facts
speak for themselves. l wager that
farming will pay better if farmer
will hold on to his cotton seed and
compost them with his lot manure,
and rotate his crops and turn under
vegetable matter to decompose in the
land than by selling his cotton
seed and buying fertilizers. The
great mistake that farmers have made
since the war has been in buying for
their farms so many things that they
should have made themselves. The
out-gO far exceeded their income, and
that has been the great error and
trouble with them, and still continues
to some extent. Winter is up
on us, and what should be
the first work of the winterP With
those who have not terraced their
farms yet, let terracing be their first
WI W OOAO anu UOA c1CO anu save
your lands. And those who have ter
raced, overhaul your terraces, and
where their are any defects repair
them. The day for washing and gull
lying farms should be no more when
they can be saved at so little cost and
labor. In February SOW oats and SOW
largely; decrease as much the cultiva-
table crops, and increase the small
grain crops, clover and grass. A spon-
taneous hay crop was made in North
Georgia last fall from crab grass by
the late summer rains that was abund-
ant and valuable. On some farms.
where storms and droughts damaged
the corn crops, the hay saved was
twice the value of the corn, and no
hay l have seen made from the sown
grasses is superior in quality than
crab-grass hay. The crab-grass seed
should be sown, and sown as other
grasses are, for there is no hay more
valuable than crab-grass hay.-Cor.
Southern Cultivator.