The Savannah morning news. (Savannah, Ga.) 1900-current, 1903-04-13
FARM,
Our Grasses and CIOvers-our Only
Hone Lies in stock Farming.

and clovers. any three or four of
which would make Southern stock
growing A success the great bulk of
the industry would be founded on not
more than a half-dozen. There are
that many best for the purpose. Still
there are others inferior to the six best
that might on occasion be better for
certain individual cases. For in
stance a farm might be well set in
certain native grasses and clovers,
not equal to lucern or red clover or
meadow oat grass perhaps, but are
well qualified to produce the very
best growth of animal life. These be
ing native to the soil all that will be
needed for a term of years after be-
ginning the business is to pillow and
harrow the soil at the proper time,
give it a good rolling if necessary, and
in few weeks time there will be pas
ture or meadow for that season at any
rate. If our farmers only had the
courage to apply about s. worth of
some good heterogeneous fertilizer per
acre to some of their well-worn sandy
soil and taking up a few acres of it
every year and thus treating it, it
would not be many years before the
whole farm or most of it would be re-
stored to a condition of fertility that
it has not known in a long time.
That is the beauty" of stock farm
ing. 1t is constantly making the land
richer. once a first-class pasture or
meadow has been established on soil
it may be reckoned as rich for the
ensuing ten or twenty years.
Vegetable matter or humus is the
basis of all soil fertility. Stock the
soil with il and it is then in condition
to grow proftably any crop that might
b. cultivated on it, At most all that
will be needed to make it superlatively
rich will be mineral matter which is
cheaply supplied in the South.
The great bulk of Southern soil is
pretty well worn. Much of it very
near to being worn out or will be be-
fore many more years of slip-shod,
reckless cultivation. Every droughty
year now the Southern farmer makes
something very close to failure-is
thankful or has cause 10 be if he
comes out even on the years work.
The soil, very nearly exhausted of its
vegetable matter, cannot produce Its
average crop of one bale to four
acres-call 1t three if you will-unless
the rains occur lust right" five
weeks drought is ruinous, a three
weeks dry spell causes more or less
loss on the Congratulated sandy up
lands of the South.
The only hope of a country or sec
tioE of country, where the soil has
been worn out with fifty, forty or
thirty years of constant clean culture
such as attaches to the growth of to-
bacco, sugar cane, cotton and corn is
a change to pastoral farming, where
the hoe is a useless implement and
where even the pillow may become con-
siderably rusted. OF course there are
some annual plants that will be made
use of by the wise stock-farmer and
several of these to do their best must
be sown in rows and cultivated at
beast a time or two.
1t would hardly be possible to at
tain the highest success in stock graz
ing here without more or less use of
sorghum, fodder corn, field pease vel
vet beans, soy bean, artichoke and
turnips and all of these with one eX-
ception are tender and allow of be-
ing planted only in the spring and none
of them can be grown to best adj
vantage without being cultivated.
If the Southern small farmer only
knew it he denies himself much
wheat or flour by not including wheat
in the list of plants that must be cul-
tivated to produce anything like its
most profitable results but he is not
likely to make the same mistake in
regard to fodder corn.
At the beginning of these remarks
upon our pasture and meadow plants,
Burmuda grass, orchard grass, Johnson
grass and lucem were enumerated
as a quartette of perennials that
would be generally used. Meadows
and pastures, we'll established with all
or any of these splendid plants. will
have a value almost as we'll defined
as an apple orchard or an orange
grove. In Europe there are thousands
of acres set in permanent grass and
clover that are taxed anywhere from
5000 TO $500 per acre and bring an an
nual rental of $75 to $125 and the rent
ers make a good living from it. And
In this country, too, youthful as it is,
even its oldest sections there are pas
ture and meadow lands taxed for more
than 800 per acre that pay good in
terest. Right here in the South be-
tween 81 and SO degrees of latitude, we
have thousands of acres that will make
fine pasture or meadow as exist
anywhere in this country. OF course
they viii not come just so, but must
result from the display of a proper
intelligence that recognizes the neceS-
sity of thorough preparation of the
soil, and liberal application of proper
plant food at the beginning and re-
peated every year until perfection has
been attained. Thousands of farmers
in Georgia have been spending their
energies for twenty years or more in
preventing Bermuda taking possession
of soil that was making them nothing
from the cultivation of it when if they
had let the grass take it and had
manured II the land would now be
worth $50 to 500 per acre-measured
by its capacity-to produce beef and
pork.
Very few of our farmers have ever
seen first class pasture or meadow
from any kind of grass of clover. Their
idea of pasture embraces little more
than a grass grown acre that would
give an energetic COW about all she
could do to fill her stomach in a steady
go of two or three hours or if the acre
We're in meadow would yield from hall
ton TO one ton of coarse hay. They
have never seen solid mass of grass
and clover from knee to waist high
that would cut three to five tons OF
line hay at a cutting or where a COW
lying down could fill the most capacious
NAV in an hours time. They need
TO see something like this before theH
can become thoroughly enthused witt
the possibilities of stock growing II
one or two articles we purpose to show
them how such q pasture or meadow
can soon be established on any Geor
gia farm.
Chufas.