The log cabin Democrat., 1910-03-02
DON'T PLANT TOO EARLY. SAYS ROGERS

As winter is lingering so long tha
 it is impossible for the farmers to dC
 as much winter blowing as a grea
 many of them were expecting to do and realizing that great many o1 them get in hurry to plant as soor
 as they think the weather will per
 init at all. I wish to remind them o1
 the importance of the preparation o1
 the seed bed, though it should make
 planting a little later. Now if a goot
 crop is what you expect this veal
 (and I am sure it is), 1 would ad
 wise that you guard against the idef
 of planting too early. Remember, tho success or failure of the crop depends
 largely upon the preparation of the
 soil. A successful farmer never
 plants his seed until he has thorough
 ly prepared his seed bed. The hard winter has done much, no doubt, to- wards pulverizing the land, neverthe- less, the better you prepare your seed bed, the better results you may expect. It has been well said by one that is in a position to know, that every day s work we do on the land before plant ing, is worth any two days work it gets after planting. Let good we'll pulverized seed bed be our motto for the planting of this crop.
 It seems that the southern farmers are going crazy on the fertilizer question: There is millions of dollars spent every year for fertilizer that could be avoided if we would only use our brains and little more energy. If we would prepare good pastures, grow more feedstuffs and have more live stock to feed it to, take better care of our barnyard manure, put in a little more of the time we are fool ing away, cleaning out fence corners and gathering up all the decaying matter we can get, and put on our land we would not have to spend so much of our hard earnings for fertilizer. And better still, when we come to our senses and begin to think little, we find that we would have our own corn, our own meat, our own milk and butter, and our own horses and mules; in fact, we could have nearly everything that we need to live on at home. Then we could have our cotton money to buy such things as we need but cannot raise, after which We could begin to build up our farms, beautify our homes, have better church and school houses; and the fact is, we could soon begin to make country life so pleasant and at tractive that it would have a tendency to stop the flow of immigration from the country to the towns. But 1 am getting away from the main question I wanted to discuss in this article. l am very much interested now about the fertilizer question. Now let me tell you, farmers, if you are expect ing to build up your lands, or even hold it to what it now is by the con- stant use of commercial fertilizer alone, you will most assuredly land on the "sand-bar of disappointment, without a paddle" But there is a way to build the land up and make it produce better 100 years from now than it is at the present time; and that way is as suggested above, to- gether with the growing of legumin- ous crops, blowing under all vegetable matter that can be had, thereby put ting humus in the soil, and by so do- ing you will soon have an abundance of nitrogen, the very thing that your land needs worst, and is the most ex- pensive ingredient of the fertilizer you buy. l hope it will not be under stood that l am opposed to the use of commercial fertilizer altogether, but I am opposed to the extravagant use of it. We should study the needs of our soil, and when We buy fertilizer, buy the kind adapted to the soil for which we are buying it. It is a sad sight to see wagonload after wagonload of fer tilizer being hauled out at great cost to the consumers, large percent of it at least, to be put on lands to which
 it is of very little benefit. We are
 making the fertilizer companies rich
 paying the railroad companies tC
 freight 1t to us, paying some one tC
 handle it for us and complain about il
 being so high, and at the same time
 raise cotton to buy the most of oul
 feed, meat, flour, molasses, potatoes
 etc, then "cuss' everybody and every
 thing else that we can "cuss,' and stil