The progressive farmer and the cotton plant., 1905-01-10

peas. We have told them how these plants will
get the nitrogen for them free of cost that they
now pay large prices for in fertilizers. We have
told them how the peas will not only supply nitro
gen to the soil. but will furnish them one of the
most valuable hay crops for the feeding of stock
and the making of manure. We have told them
that through the use of the pea stubble and the
manure, they can increase the humus in their soil
and through the misunderstanding nature of this
decayed vegetable matter they will be enabled to
use the cheaper forms of plant-food in a more
liberal way. We have told them that a liberal
application of acid phosphate and potash to the
pea crop will not only give them a bigger crop
of forage for their stock. but will enable them
to grow the succeeding crop of cotton without
nitrogen fertilization and make a better crop of
cotton.
And yet only here and there is a farmer who
has sufficient faith in his business to make it a
systematic profession, and the South will never
be brought up to it's highest productiveness and
agricultural prosperity till the old method is
abandoned and the farmers go to farming. I'm
told millions are spent every year by the cotton
farmers for ammonia In fertilizers, not an ounce
Of which need be bought if they farmed in a good
rotation, having always a pea stubble or crimson
clover sod to turn for the cotton. Then growing
legumes they would have their corn slower, the
finest of roughage for stock, and no matter what
a mans money crop may be, if he entirely ignores
the feeding of stock, he is not farming in the best
manner. While the legumes, like peas and clover,
will get him the nitrogen free of cost, and, in fact,
will enable him to make a profit out of stock in
the growing of them, they will not furnish the
mineral matter as in potassium and phosphorus,
and these should be used in a far more liberal
manner.
BEATING THE WEST ON HAY AND CORN.
My advice, then, is for the cotton farmer to
study his profession and not to be simply a Plant
er of cotton and a gambler on the chances with a
little fertilizer bought on credit; that he deter
mine to farm his land so as to increase it's produc-
tiveness, not only in cotton, but in the crops that
enable him to farm right and to grow them in
such a way that they will be sources of profit.
There are farmers in the South who have grown
as big crops of corn per acre as were ever grown
in the so-called belt of the Central West. Why
then is the production of corn SO low in the
South? Simply because it is looked upon merely
as supplies" and the farmers go over an ex-
tended area to get just what they need at home,
when. if they farmed right, it would take but a
small part of the crop for home, while the rest
could go into hogs and cattle to sell.
The census shows that for ten years the product
of hay per acre in the State of North Carolina
has been greater than in Iowa, and yet Iowa grows
millions of bales to North Cardinals hundred,
though it is worth three times as much in North
Carolina as in Iowa per ton. And the Iowa
farmers grow rich raising hay and feeding stock
while the Southern farmers, with the best money
crop in the land, are the prey of spectators and
are dead-broke when cotton gets low.
SAVING HALE THE FERTILIZERS.
One half the enormous fertilizer bill of the
South is for nitrogen that they need not buy if