The progressive farmer and southern farm gazette. (Starkville, Miss.) 1910-1920, 1910-04-30
Professor Massey's
Editorial Page.
The South's Great Variety of Leeumes

VNl crops. Some of them have been dropped
out, either because the forage made from them is
not good or not relished by stock, or because they
have been found unsuited to various sections
The two legumes that have become of the
greatest value in most parts of the South are
the cowpea and crimson or annual clover, the
one for summer and the other for winter soil
cover and spring fertilization These two plants
make team that will do more for the general
area of the South than anything that can be
grown, the one for hay and the other for plow-
ing under in the spring, after saving the waste
of the soil all winter.
In the far South the velvet bean has a great
value and may supersede the cowpea forage
maker. In Florida the beggar weed has been
found valuable, but it's value decreases rapidly
northward, until in the larger part
Of the South it is simply weed. The velvet
bean, while of great value where it natures,
soon reaches a point northward where the cow
pea will always beat it. In favorable seasons
it will mature in the far southeastern section Of
North Carolina, and even in the central part OF
the State it will make immense amount of for
age. Planted in rows eight feet apart at Raleigh,
they made a mass the whole ground half
waist deep. l believe that in all the warmer
parts of the South the velvet bean be made
very profitable for green soiling to cattle
Much has been said in regard to the vetches
and especially in regard to what is known the
Hairy vetch Sand Vetch Where grain
like wheat is with the Hairy vetch, to sus-
tain it off the ground it will make fine hay
crop from fall sowing, and can be gotten of the
ground in time to grow a crop of cowpea hay.
and to leave the land in crimson clover in the
fall.
l once sowed wheat and vetch in the fall, cut
the crop in May and cured it for hay. sowed the
land in cowpeas and cut these for hay and had
fair stand Of alfalfa the land before cold
weather. This Of course, with liberal use of acid
phosphate and potash In the lower Mississippi
valley the stations have found that the soil is
plentifully supplied with potash, but there 1t
will not do to ignore the needs of the legumes for
phosphoric acid, which, with nitrogen, is the
greatest deficiency in all of old cultivated
soils. and is apt to be the determining factor in
any fertilizer mixture.
In the lime lands of Mississippi the melilotus
or sweet clover has been found to be valuable
legume for the improvement of the soil. 1t grows
as weed all over the United States, but far
as my experience goes cattle will have to be
half starved before they will eat it, and think IL
has little value forage plant.
But the legume that has excited more attention
than any other in recent years is alfalfa, or lu-
cerne, as it was formerly called In the arid sec
ton OF the West alfalfa has become the greatest
OF forage crops, and here and there in the East
/ as about Syracuse in New York and at Hillsboro
] N. c.. alfalfa has been grown successfully for
more than generation. The alfalfa region of
Mississippi and Alabama seems destined to be
one OF the richest agricultural sections in America
before many years
Alfalfa, when we'll established, will certainly
make an immense amount of valuable forage
But it is not a crop to bring up poor land as the
cowpea is. for alfalfa demands a fertile soil a
well-drained soil. and in which the subsoil
Will allow the roots to penetrate deeply With a
lot near the barn where the farmer can get the
land into high condition he can do well with al.