The Florida agriculturist. [volume] (DeLand, Fla.) 1878-1911, 1889-04-24
The Cultivation of Cotton.

several farmers IN that vicinity made a
bale of cotton to the acre on poor pine
land. The editor of the Southern Farm
called this statement in question and re
ceived the following in reply.
| can give the methods of some of them
essentially, if not exactly. Mr.. j. 3.
Parker, of Sanderville, Miss, lives on a
naturally poor pine woods farm, so poor
that a relation of his few years since,
after living on the place year, refused to
accept it as free gift, declaring that no
man could make a living on it. Mr. Parker
went there and resolved to stick. Hep1t
up good house and good barnes, and
cleared up some level land where lifelong
leaf pines were so thick that rifle-ball
could not pass through the field without
hitting tree. For the first two or three
years, only know that he was remark
ably successful and made money. For
the last three years | have been to his
place frequently. His average cotton
crop has been about twenty to twenty
five acres, producing a bale per acre;
sometimes a little over and sometimes a
little less.
Fertilizing, | think, is the secret of his
success, although he cultivates well. The
mixture he makes, as well as remember,
is thirty bushels cotton seed, thirty
bushels stable manure (or in absence of
stable manure, barn-yard manure), 900
pounds acid phosphate and 200 pounds
kainit, or, if | am mistaken as to the pro-
portions, / will say in the proportion OF
Furman's Formula. This amount he
drills in the water furrow of two or two
and a half acres, and beds on it before
planting the 10th to the Both of April.
The cultivation is about the same as
that usually given cotton by a careful and
painstaking farmer. Mr.. Parker wealth
is now counted by the thousands, and he
has made it farming on poor pine land.
have also been acquainted for thelast
two years with Mr.. D. B. Parker, a brother
of the above-named gentleman. He mixes
his materials and applies them in about
the same manner as his brother, except
that he usually drills in 200 pounds OF
commercial fertilizer around his cotton
to the second blowing. In 1887 he aver
aged on all his crop about bale, and on
one acre where he used about SIG worth
of compost and commercial fertilizer,
produced two heavy bales, which netted
him, after paying all expenses, about $50.
In 1888 he made twenty-six bales on
thirty-one acres, a severe stormin August
having cut the crop short.
Matt Moss, a gentleman living fifteen
miles north of this, | know very inti-
mately, and in fact am at his place every
week or two / well remember, some eight
years ago, when | was a lad of a boy, the
bitter protests of his good old mother
in-law against his moving to a place
which in her estimation meant certain
starvation for her daughter. The place
was very level and had been in cultivation
s'befo' de wah;" since then the fire has
swept over it every year, and the only
growth was sedge grass, which late in the
fall ripened into a sickly crop of broom
sedge about ten inches high This sedge
was turned over in the fall and againlate
in the winter, and a crop of corn and cot
l<1.o ,o1o,,+oJ IN bo cyou;,orr To ,1CoI oOt