The Camden chronicle. (Camden, Tenn.) 1890-current, 1905-04-07
Reftoring Fertility.


grow here, writes Professor A. M.
Soule. Chief among these are the le-
gumes. Some of the clovers do well in
nearly all sections of the South, and
the cowpea and velvet bean grow
everywhere. These wonderful plants
with their power of assimilating and
building atmospheric nitrogen into the
soil and furnishing an available supply
of vegetable matter when plowed un-
der, which improves the texture and
holding capacity of the soil and
adds to its fertility, can be utilized for
the purpose of soil improvement. Their
action is sure and rapid and so the
means for the regeneration Of the soil
and the certain increase and mainten-
ance of it's capacity for the production
of cotton is within the reach Of the av-
erage farmer.
There are two other means-legumin-
GUS crops alone will not supply all the
needed elements for cotton production.
The soils of the South are frequently
deficient in phosphoric acid in partic-
ular, and in many instances in potash.
Continuous cultivation has frequently
made them sour. The liberal use Of
phosphoric acid in applications Of 200
to 300 pounds Of fourteen to sixteen
per cent. goods per acre will go long
way toward increasing the production
Of cotton on the average soils now de-
voted to its culture in the South. From
twenty-five to fifty pounds Of muriate
of potash should be added to this mix
ture and where the land is acid an ap-
plication OF twenty-five to fifty bushels
of lime per acre will help it wonder
fully. The South is the greatest phos-
phate producing region Of the world;
thus nature has placed within the
reach of the farmer and at prices he
can afford to pay the needed mineral
elements which, together with the le-
guminous crops suggested will enable
him to rebuild his soils in the shortest
possible time and bring them back to
their virgin condition.
In this connection there is another
matter which cannot be emphasized
too strongly and which has never been
fully realized by the Southern farmer,
and that is the necessity of feeding the
by-products Of the cotton plant to cat
tie and sheep in particular. The eli
mate and soil and the crops they pro-
duce are admirably adapted for the
development of great feeding indus
tries in the South. Everything war
rants the pursuit of this industry on
profitable basis. Unfortunately the
Southern farmer has been unable to OBJ
tain a cash price for the cotton seed,
and it has gone like the lint, thus rob-
bling his soils Of immense stores Of fer
tility and reducing their power to yield
paying crops. Could the cotton seed
meal produced in the South be fed and
farm-yard manure utilized, the farmer
would obtain two profits from its use:
First, feeding profit, and second, a
fertilizing profit, and with this addi-
ton to the natural resources at his
command the soil problem would be
solved. Is there some way by which
the farmers of the South can be
aroused from their lethargy and made
to appreciate and utilize the streams of
gold which now run through their
hands through failure to utilize the
by-products of the cotton plant in max
ing of beef and dairy products? Is
there not some means by which they
can be brought to realization of the
rapid destruction and exhaustion of
their farms through the present alb
surd practice of selling both the lint
and by-products and expecting the
land to maintain its virgin yielding ca
pacity without the return of fertilizers,
either in the form of animal manures
or mineral elements to the soil?