The Florida agriculturist. [volume] (DeLand, Fla.) 1878-1911, 1899-05-03

upon the bowels as red clover.
After growing and feeding soy beans
and cowpeas for six years, watching
carefully their effects as feed in the
way of grain or hay, and the effect
upon the soil, we predict that in the
near future soy beans will supplant
cotton seed meal and oil cake i'll any
latitude where they will mature. Our
reason is that farmers can raise ton
of SOY beans worth counting the
thrashed straw three times as much
as ton Of corn, and or less cost than
ton of corn. And tins additional rea-
son: While he is raising this ton of
highly concentrated feed he is at the
same time adding a fertilizing quality
to his soil worth nearly as much as
the feed value.
Table No. gives value of soy beans.
COW peas and red clover Seeds tops
and roots as fertilizers. That is TO say
if the crops estimated are plowed I'M
der at the proper stage they will add
the several values to the top soil; get
ting the nitrogen from the air. the
phosphate and potash from the subS0il
below where the roots of our common
farm crops reach.
Corn oats. wheat and all the grass
es except the clOvers) are soil feeders:
termed exhaustive crops because they
take the elements that make up their
growth-namely, nitrogen, the phos-
pilates and potash-an out of the soil,
each crop using up so much of this fix
ed amount. A depleted soil and a
of
exhaustion. Soy beans, cowpeas and
all the clovers, or leguminous family
of plants, are termed air feeders or
renovator crops. The nitrogen in the
eight tons of green coWpeas is worth
$3.50: in the nine and a half tons of
green soy beans, $26.1O; in the thirteen
tons of green clover, $27.3O. The bal
ance of the fertiliZing value was
pumped up through the boot forma-
ton from the soil below where ''soil
feeding crops" can reach.
Another point in favor of soy beans
and cowpeas over clover is that the
beans and peas will make full seed
hay or fertiliZing crop in four months,
while it takes fourteen months to get
a crop of clover. This certainty of soy
clover is a serious matter. In the six
years we have grown beans and peas
we have never had failure. Our
neighbors who try to raise clover fail
three years out of five. Our farm,
purchased in 1891, had Leen rented for
thirty years and was thin prairie soil,
Glover will now grow on it; white clio
yer has run out the tame grasses in
the pastures. Had we then, 1891,
known what the readers of this jour-
nal do now about soy beans and cow
peas, we could have made more
change in four years than we have ac-
complished in eight.
The farmers prosperity is based up
on protein. or heterogeneous feeds. Plant
richness means purse richness. The
bona structure is the foundation of all
animal frames ana farm wealth. If
you want full, rounded out forms in
your stock you must feed muscle food
If you want big lungs, big stomach,
long intestines, Solo pliable skin,
strong blood vessels, Well-StrunS
nerves, heavy coat of hair, wool or
feathers, what makes all these must
first be a constituent of the food be-
fore it can become part Of your ami
NAL. This constituent must be the
protein element Of the food. The fat
or carbohydrates furnish the energy
or force. Then why, Mr.. Editor, do
not our farmers study these questions?
Wa do not advise our dairymen, farm
ers, breeders or feeders to discard our
standard crops with which they are ia