The progressive farmer. [volume] (Winston, N.C.) 1886-1904, 1904-03-15
Making Corn.
Editors Progressive Farmer /:

usual last year, but If they do not look out they
will find their corn crib. next fall, in the West,
and the money made on cotton going away to
other States to pay for the necessities of life.
One of the most successful farmers we ever
met attributes his good fortune largely to the
fact that while his tenants made cotton, he de-
voted his attention on his wages farm to the grow
ing something with which to feed them and their
animals. He made corn, wheat, oats, potatoes
and meat which he sold them on credit, and at the
end of the year he owned nearly all the cotton
these people had worked all the summer to make
and gather. He grew some cotton also, to be
sure, but he grew it as a surplus crop and in a
regular rotation. Now, if they do not mind, a
great many of our farmers will find themselves
next fall in the condition of this gentleman's ten
ants; some one else will own the cotton, or what
amounts to the same thing, some one else will get
most of the money the cotton brings, in ex-
change for corn, meat, flour, hay, etc. There is
ID tendency right now to plant all the best land in
cotton and stick the corn in anywhere around the
edges.
Now, friends, this will not do! The price of
corn is advancing as we'll as the price of cotton.
1t is already worth seventy cents per bushel in
Atlanta, and is going higher. We must lay our
plans to make what corn we will need for home
consumption at least, then we shall be able to
keep some of our cotton money when we get it.
We should, therefore, divide up our land and
make a good corn crop as well as cotton crop.
All through the upper part of Georgia and adj
joining States the practice is to plant corn on
the river and creek bottoms year after year,
and with little or no fertilizer. Where the land
is o~verfown periodically by creek or river, the
fertility of the land is fairly we'll maintained
and even increased. But there is a very large
amount of bottom land that does not become
overfown, and on such land the yield of corn is
becoming lighter year by year. 1t still grows
a fairly good stalk, but the ears are nothing like
so heavy as formerly.
This falling off is undoubtedly due to the
exhaustion of the mineral elements of plant food
in the soil, phosphoric acid and potash. There is
still a fair amount of organic or vegetable matter
in most of these soils which the growth of grass
and weeds, after the crop is laid by, helps to keep
up. The growth of stalk also indicates that there
is at least a fair supply of ammonia. The ear,
however, is deficient, and ears are what we want.
When we realize that a crop of fifty bushels of
corn per acre actually removes from an acre of
land sixty-seven pounds of nitrogen, thirty-one
pounds of phosphoric acid and eighty pounds of
potash, we can better understand why, if the sup
ply of plant food is not renewed, the ears will
grow smaller from year to year. If our yield per
acre is only twenty-five bushels, the drain upon
the soil will be half the above amount, and to
meet this and increase our yield of corn from year
to year, we should use on such land at least six
hundred pounds per acre of a fertilizer Analysing
nitrogen 2H2 per cent, phosphoric acid 7 per
cent, and potash s per cent. To make this fer
tilizer, take cottonseed meal six hundred and
eighty pounds, acid phosphate one thousand
pounds, and muriate of potash three hundred and