The Montgomery advertiser., 1904-12-03
PIXIES BANNER FARhu |
TWENTY NINE ACRES OF LAND' PRODUCED s2,000.
Remarkable Crop Success oi w. r' Huey !. M, Carter and Thetr Neighbors Near Oiustee
 Creek.

Olustee Creek. Ala, Dec. z' I'V4' Editor The Advertiser:
 With pleasure, l cDnply with yeu: reQust to write you an articie aoou' the large cotton crop grown py MT w.
 F. Huey, of Briar Hill. Before proceeding to my task allo" a short Aggression. The lands or thls
 community were originally very pro.
 ductive. but by long years or tilias under tho old methods they were irh-
 poverishcd and many of our best peo- pie removed to Texas. and other states. While commercial fertilizers made otn- CT sections of the county bloom as a
 rose. they failed to give remuneratl@e returns when applied to our lands, ard not until after much experimenting were we enabled to solve the tertiiizer problem. The area which we could plant in cotton was greatly restricted by the appearance of black rust Tn July of each year. Various remedies suggested by agricultural writers, were tried to no avail. We were told that rust was due to the absence of humus in the soil This looked plausible enough. selected rich gottom on which oats were grown the previous year. The vegetation was so dense that :t was with much difficulty that 1t was turned under with large blows. rms lana was well fertilized with cotton seed and phosphate. Until the middle ot July l had a magnificent prospect for crop To my great surprise the black rust overran 1t and soor there as scarcely a leaf on the plant.
 Some wise acre advised growing COW peas on the land That also seemed plausible. But 1t. too, proved a failure
 The more vegetable matter I added to my soil the more rust I had. Other ex-
 periments were tried with like results During this time l noticed that where
 a fallen tree or stump was burned TO
 rust appeared on the cotton plarts.
 This led me. in 1897, to apply e sack of kainit on a small plat of land that was predisposed to rust, with the result that the cotton remained green and healthy until frost.
 Experiments made later by MT. Huey demon strated the fact that our lands did not need phosphate. So last year we began using cotton seed-meal and kainit only. and the results has been highly satisfactory. My tenants who used 250 pounds of this fertilizer per acre have averaged eleven bales per blow. On lands worked by hired labor and on which 300 to 400 pounds were used. the yield was largely increased. Now, we will return to MT. Huey. He has. I suppose. forty to sixty acres of fresh bottom land. The balance of his | plantation is no better than adjoining places. Until last year. his cotton crops
 were not as good as mine and others of his neighbors. This year he has almost doubled us. Why so? He had ,he
 nerve to put down nearly twice es
 much fertilizer per acre as did hls neighbors.
 On a six horse farm he made 14O
 bales of cotton, averaging 800 pounds. All of his tenants made more or less corn. Five of the six farms. were cul- tivated by tenants on halves. One Of these consisting almost wholly # first years land produced only eleven bales. One farm, cultivated with h,.ed labor under the supervision of MT. Huey gave phenomenal yield. Eighc acres were planted in corn and twenty -line in cotton, besides patches of potatoes, sugarcane, sorghum for hay. etc. He gathered about 175 bushels of corn and 1s.s51 pounds of lint cotton. Averag,
 ing them at 400 pounds, he made nearly forty-seven bales of cotton on twenty nine acres with one blow. At an aver age price of g 1-2 cents per pound this brought $1.771,s4. He sold his entire crop of seed at SIG per ton. Add to
 this $2S0 received for the seed and we
 have total of over $2ooO as the pro-
 ceeds of a one mule farm and this
 exclusive of the corn, hay. syrup, pota . toes. etc.
 If there be those who doubt the trut h
 of what I have here written as to Mir.
 Huey's crop. they may be convinced easily by coming down hera and seeing for themselves. He has the receipts
 to show for this cotton sold. He can
 show two acres of land that pro-
 duced four bales of cotton without any fertilizer.
 I should be proud to have the editor
 of The Advertiser or any one nttached
 to it, come down here as my euog. and
 see what we are doing. While some of us havn't made as much cotton as Mir Huey. we have full corr cribs, plenty
 of hay. hogs. etc, etc.
 J. NJ Garter