The progressive farmer and southern farm gazette. (Starkville, Miss.) 1910-1920, 1910-06-04
Professor Massey's
Editorial Page.
Farm Work for June.

40 FAR IN MOST sections the weather has
been such that farmer should be Gin the
~ grass" 1t has been good season to test
the value of the smoothing harrow and the weeder
in the cotton and fields. The man whose
crop is clean will have no trouble in keeping
it so with the riding cultvator, while if the wealth
er sets in wet there will be the usual cry from the
men who depend one-horse implements to Gull
tivate their cotton and corn
There are now offered gangs of weeder teeth
that can be attached to any riding two-horse cul-
tivator and they seem to me to be the ideal shall
low cultivators. The great advantage OF rapid
and shallow cultivation is that the weed seed near
enough to the surface to terminate are killed and
brought up to terminate, and the
field will be clean when laid-by
field of very rich land had it at my visit
last fall crop of nearly 100 bushels of corn per
acre. and the land absolutely clean of weeds
or grass, and in the best possible condition to be
disked fine for wheat / would rather have had
some peas on it, for, have said peas do not in
jure the corn crop but help it, and when the corn
is cut, there is humus- making material in album
dance, feed to cut
Do not let the high price of peas discourage
you but reflect that it is probably fault that
you have them to buy, and resolve that next
spring you will have all you need without buying,
and perhaps some to sell to those who always have
to buy No Southern farmer afford not to
sow peas in every place where he can find room
for them Nor can he afford not to follow them
with crimson clover in the fall.
Determine that hereafter you will always have
a green winter your land and never let
a field lie bare and leach its fertility through the
winter.
In sowing peas for hay, believe that it is de-
srabe to the Tall Yellow soy bean mixed with
the peas They will help hold up the trailing
varieties, and will make the crop more easy to
harvest.
South of North Carolina the velvet bean comes
in wonderfully forage crop. 1t takes less
seed than peas soy beans, and though 1t may
not mature seed in eastern North Carolina, am
of the opinion that it will pay to grow velvet
beans in the lower eastern section. I have seen
them well podded far north as Selma, N. c.,
and at Magnolia N. c., was told that they nnd
them superior to peas forage crop, and though
making great mass of vines, they are not hard
to cure.
have grown them at Raleigh and had them
make mass almost waist high Plant them in
rows four feet apart. | would suppose that
peck, less would plant an acre.
1 am continually getting letters asking about
the cultivation of broom corn, for the high prices
told about in the papers are having the usual effect
on those who are always wanting to try crops they
are not familiar with My advice is for the
Southern farmer to farm well with the crops he
is familiar with Broom corn is as easy to grow
as any other of the sorghum family, but after it
is grown the rub 1t takes skill and ex-
perence to handle the crop successfully for mar
ket and buildings and machinery for curing and
cleaning and balng, and the chances are, that
the inexperienced will put product on the
market that will give him profit The South
has in the cotton crop crop that beats broom
corn, or anything else that the great West grows.