Audubon County journal. (Exira, Iowa) 1884-1993, 1907-07-04
ROTATION AND FERTILITY.
The One Bears Intimate Relation to
the Other.

the Other.
Our experience has proven that one
method OF conserving soil fertility is
by proper rotation of crops. OF
course we are not decrying the use Of
commercial fertilizers, for they are no
doubt beneficial in the majority of in
stances. They have been tried and
proven, but there are great number
of farmers who have not used them,
and yet by careful and constant crop
rotation have been able to keep up the
fertility of their land.
After 25 years of intense farming,
the 160-acre farm where / was born
and reared is as fertile as in the be-
ginning. This is due more to sensi-
BILE crop rotation than anything else.
OF course the manure that accumu-
lated about the barn and old straw
ricks was scattered over the thin land
every year, but the supply of fertilizer
OF this nature was very limited on the
place, not sufficient to enrich over
three or four acres any year. Then,
too, our grain was always fed on the
place, but it was soon discovered that
land could not bear corn, wheat, oats
or any one crop year after year with
the light fertilizing it would get, with
out it's strength being exhausted,
which, of course, must inevitably
mean lighter crops.
So we took care of our land by vary
ing the crops, says writer in Farm
ers Voice. After 40-acre field had
been in timothy or clover two or three
years, it would be broken up and
planted in corn. The first crop was
always good, but the second crop was
generally immense. Sometimes we
planted corn the third year, but very
seldom. More often the ground was
put in oats. This was done by break
ing the stalk fields in the spring with
cultivators, then sowing the oats and
narrowing them in. The oat crop would
often yield as high as 40 or SO bushels
to the acre. When the oats we're har-
vested and threshed, the ground was
Immediately plowed and prepared for
wheat. The wheat was sown early
enough to get good growth and be-
come well rooted by winter. Some
times we sowed mixture of timothy
and clover seed with the wheat, but
experience finally proved that clover
did not get sufficiently rooted to stand
the rigorous winters, so thenceforth
we sowed the clover and timothy on
the wheat fields, in the early spring,
about the first of March.
When the wheat was harvested there
would generally be good stand of
clover and timothy, and the next year
there would be heavy crop of good
meadow to reap. This field was left
in meadow for two or three years; was
then again broken and put through
similar rotation of crops, and these
rotations seemed to build up rather
than destroy the fertility of the soil.
Anyhow, year after year our toll was
rewarded with good crops, and the
land seemed to be as rich and mellow
at the close of each rotation as at its
beginning.
Now, | do not claim that rotation of
crops alone will render soil ineXhaust-
ible, for science and experience
teaches that any soil will become i'm
poverished and unproductive with con-
tinuous cropping unless the plant food
taken therefrom be replaced by the
means of some fertilizer. But there
is no doubt enough plant food in good
rich land to yield abundant harvests
for many years if the crops are prop.
erly rotated.