The Savannah morning news., 1903-11-02
GARDEN
AND HOUSEHOLD
FARM,
By S. A. COOK.

Practical Farm TOpics-One Duty to
the Soil.
To the young man whose life's work
is to be farming, there can be few
subjects more important than the one
of improving or even maintaining the
quality of his arabic land-the land
that he cultivates yearly in some crop
or another-whether devoted to fruit,
10 truck crops, 20 ordinary staple
crops, or to pastures or meadows. This
land is the farmers capital 1t would
be very unwise to allow it's producing
capacity to decline even a little every
year, which, of course, it would do if
q crop We're taken from lit annual
~, and nothing given back to the soil.
The very best soil would ultimately be
worn out under such treatment. The
reason why we have so much worn out
land in the South to-day is because of
our miserable tenant system. The ten
ant without guidance or control is con-
cerned only with what he can take
from the land. He will bestow no la
Dor on returning anything to it. To be
sure, the Southern landlord is the slave
of conditions that grew out of a sud
den change in his relations to the farm
laborer There has not been time yet
to develop a tenant system reasonable
and just to the land. In time we will
have such as prevail in older countries
where the tenant is compelled to do his
part in maintaining a certain nor
NAL condition of fertility of the land
he rents. Here our tenants are con-
stantly changing-that is, the large ma
jority of them. Few of them stay on
the same farm ten or even five years,
and the most of them are very igno-
rant and thriftless. Without supervis-
ion they are liable to almost ruin the
hest soil in a few years-plowing 1t
when too wet, burning off all vegetable
matter, allowing gullies to start and
widen, etc. For the reason given and
for one or two others, there is no
country in the world perhaps where the
land is treated with so little consider
alton as here in the South. We can
not expect ignorant tenants to treat
land as it should be treated. 1t is only
the intelligent owner of it that is like
~ to do any part of his duty in this
respect.
With cotton as the chief crop on the
Southern farm--a crop less eXhaustlnS
than any other staple crop-and with
corn second in Importance crop
made with little work and requiring
the land but A few months and al
ways allowing a humus crop, such as
peas, to go with it, there is little ex-
cuse for our soils growing poorer mere
~ from the crops taken from them. II
we will only protect them from wash
ing and give back to them all refuse
of the ctops-the stalks, peavlnes, etc,
and further keep stock from trampling
the fields in wet weather, the actual
loss of plant food will be very little
any one year And when with our
ability to SOW down our fields to GER
tain clover or grain crops in the fall
to catch and hold any elements OF
plant food that become soluble during
the winter that otherwise might be
leacned into the subsoil-with these ad-
vantages we are better able to keep
our soils up to a standard condition
than the farmers of the cold North,
with their short summers and long WIN
tiers and their more exhausting crops
usually.
In this respect we are blessed be-
yond most countries, and we should
take full advantage of the blessing