Crop rotation

“ Every spring the fields which have just produced plants are plowed at the close of our shipping season and put through our crop rotation process. This thoroughly renovates the soil and supplies in proper proportions nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium, the essential elements of plant food together with an abundance of humus, the medium through which plants feed. It is what might be termed a regenerative process because it actually renews or rebuilds the soil. ”

“ Rotation helps to maintain or increase the plant food in the surface soil. When crops like cowpeas or clover which take mineral food from the subsoil and nitrogen from the air, are plowed under, they give up the plant food in their leaves, stems and upper roots to the surface soil, and thus help to maintain or increase fertility.
Rotation tends to protect crops from injurious insects and diseases. If one kind of crop is grown continuously on one piece of land the soil becomes infested with the insects and diseases which injure that particular crop. ”

“ Proper use, such as conserves and increases soil productivity, involves the most approved cultural methods, the application of such fertilizers as may be required for varying soil conditions, the raising of live stock, and, above all, the scientific rotation of crops. There can be little question that the most unwise use to which a soil can be subjected is the raising of the same crop for a long series of years. Some very interesting experiments in continuous cropping and crop rotation, covering a period of sixty-five years, have been carried on at Rothamsted, England. ”

“ Here are two systems of crop-rotation as practiced at one or more agricultural experiment stations. Each furnishes an ideal plan for keeping up land.
In these rotations the cowpeas and clovers are nitrogen-gathering crops. They not only furnish hay but they enrich the soil. The wheat, corn, and cotton are money crops, but in addition they are cultivated crops; hence they improve the physical condition of the soil and give opportunity to kill weeds. The grasses and clovers are of course used for pasturage and hay. This is only a suggested rotation. Work out one that will meet your home need. ”

“ In a proper succession of crops the soil is covered with living plants nearly all the time, and thus is prevented from washing or leaching.
7. In addition to these influences upon soil fertility, crop-rotation assists in control of insect and fungous foes and of weeds; it permits such distribution of labor on the farm that the largest total production may be secured by its employment; and it saves the farmer from sole dependence upon a single crop. ”

“ Using these observations as a foundation, he built up a theory that plants may injure each other by the matter excreted from their roots, and that the success of crop rotation lies in preventing an undue accumulation of excreted material in the soil. ”

“ Doubtless you know what is meant by rotation, for your teacher has explained to you already how the earth rotates, or turns, on its axis and revolves around the sun. When we speak of crop-rotation we mean not only that the same crop should not be planted on the same land for two successive years but that crops should follow one another in a regular order. ”

“ It involves the organization of a farm for best results, and in the scheme that should be worked out for any particular farm the most important feature is the crop-rotation. The selection of crops is controlled by so many local considerations, including the personal likes and dislikes of the farmer, that very rightly the kinds of rotation are innumerable. The order in which crops may be grown with most profit is less variable, and yet even here local conditions may quickly derange the scheme of a theorist. ”

“ The Summer-fallow.—Bare land loses in total plant-food, but may make a temporary gain in available fertility. The practice of leaving a field uncropped for an entire season has been abandoned in good farming regions. Where moisture is in scant supply, and a soil is thin, there continue instances of the summer-fallow. In a crop-rotation containing corn and wheat, the corn-stubble land is left unbroken until May or June, and then plowed. In August it is plowed again, and fitted for seeding to wheat. ”

“ On most soils of the east it will not remain productive for more than four to six years, and that fact detracts little from its value. It should fit into crop-rotations, adding fertility for grain crops. When grown in a six-years rotation with corn and oats or other small grain, it furnishes a rich sod for the corn, and the manure made from the hay helps to solve the farmer's fertility problem. ”

“ A given amount of plant-food is put upon the land, which is under a four-years' rotation. One half of it is applied every second year. The corn gets one half because it can use it to advantage. The oat crop that follows finds enough fertility because the soil is good. Next in the rotation is the wheat, and the wheat and timothy and clover plants can use fertilizer with profit. There is no change in its character because it is the soil that is getting the assistance, and not primarily just one crop in a rotation. ”

“ Rotation of crops follows the two-field system, in which the main crop of wheat or barley is sown in alternate years only, the land, in the intermediate years, being either left fallow or put under a crop of different type, such as sesame, durra, leguminous plants or roots. Such rotation, though not providing for winter fodder, is adapted to the natural requirements of the soil, but needs to be supplemented by adequate manuring, the absence of which is the chief defect in native cultivation. ”

“ Plants discovered the grand principle of the rotation of crops long before man did. The farmer now knows that if he sows wheat or turnips too many years running on the same plot, he 'exhausts the soil,' as we say—deprives it of certain special mineral or animal constituents needful for that particular crop, and makes the growth of the plant, therefore, feeble or even impossible. To avoid this misfortune, he lets the land lie fallow, or varies his crops from year to year according to a regular and deliberate cycle. ”

“ The rotation of crops means—taking a surface crop, such as wheat, oats, maize, &c., off the land, and then ploughing and planting a root crop, say turnips, potatoes, &c., &c. One of the best ways to manure a field impoverished by successive cropping without rest or manure is by sowing broadcast some such crop as peas, vetches, turnips, or any quick growing tender leaf plant, and when it is a few weeks old, or when the plants have leafed out well, plough it under and leave the field fallow till the following spring. ”

“ They smile when we boast about the rotation system having permitted us to take from the field one crop every year, or four crops each three years, because their ambition is to have six and nine crops from the very same plot of land during the twelve months. They do not understand our talk about good and bad soils, because they make the soil themselves, and make it in such quantities as to be compelled yearly to sell some of it: otherwise it would raise up the level of their gardens by half an inch every year. ”

“ I hope the God of truth and a long-suffering, misguided people will forgive you for that false teaching. If there is any one practice the value of which is fully understood by the farmers and landowners in the Eastern states and in all old agricultural countries, it is the practice of crop rotation. ”

“ In laying out a farm for a rotation it is 107 desirable to plan the number of fields or tracts that will go in a rotation and try to get these as nearly equal size as possible. Having decided upon the number of years the rotation is to run and having adjusted the fields or tracts accordingly, it is quite possible to modify the proportion of crops by adding one crop and dropping another at the same time. ”

“ The rotation of crops on dry-farms is usually advocated in districts like the Great Plains area, where the annual rainfall is over fifteen inches and the major part of the precipitation comes in spring and summer. The various rotations ordinarily include one or more crops of small grains, a hoed crop like corn or potatoes, a leguminous crop, and sometimes a fallow year. The leguminous crop is grown to secure a fresh supply of nitrogen; the hoed crop, to enable the air and sunshine to act thoroughly on the soil grains and to liberate plant-food, such as potash and phosphoric acid ”

“ Agriculturists had long been practically conversant with the advantages derivable from the practice of not growing the same crop on the same soil for too long a period. The advantages consequent on this so-called rotation of crops are due to more than one cause ”

“ To secure a rotation of crops, it is essential that crops capable of being grown in a district be known and that there be a market for them. Wheat has been and is the pioneer crop of the northwestern parts of this continent. Climatic conditions are important factors in determining the rotation. In Canada, oats, mangels, clover and timothy may be good crops to include, but they would be of little value for the southern states. Cotton, cowpeas and crab grass would be more likely to grow. ”

“ About ten per cent of the amount of fertilizer required for the crop is applied at the time of fitting the ground, the balance being administered from time to time as the season advances. Two crops of the rush may be taken from the same ground each year or it is grown in rotation with rice, but most extensively on the lands less readily drained and not so well suited for other crops. Fields of the rush, growing in alternation with rice, are seen in Fig. ”

“ This succession of two or more different kinds of crops for the utmost utilization of a given area of prepared soil is called rotation of crops, of which there will be more to say later.
“Deep roots, so admirably adapted to the utilization of the lower strata of the soil, become in other circumstances a source of serious difficulty. Suppose a tree is to be transplanted. Its long tap-root will make the operation difficult and hazardous. ”

“ Were it not that the water film held closely around the soil particles is possessed of extreme mobility, it would not be possible to meet the demands of the plants upon the water at comparatively great distances. Even as it is, it frequently happens that when crops are planted too thickly on dry-farms, the soil-moisture cannot move quickly enough to the absorbing roots to maintain plant growth, and crop failure results. ”

“ The principle of greatest importance in soil-preparation [Pg 8] is the gradual deepening of the soil in order that plant-roots may have more comfortable homes. If the farmer has been accustomed to plow but four inches deep, he should adjust the plow so as to turn five inches at the next plowing, then six, and so on until the seed-bed is nine or ten inches deep. This gradual deepening will not injure the soil but will put it quickly in good condition. If to good tillage rotation of crops be added, the soil will become more fertile with each succeeding year. ”

“ The opportunities which rotation cropping affords for the cleaning of the land from weeds is another distinct element of advantage. Although many different rotations of crops are practised, they may for the most part be considered as little more than local adaptations of the system of alternating root-crops and leguminous crops with cereal crops, as exemplified in the old four-course rotation—roots, barley, clover, wheat. ”

“ But we farmers have to acquire patience, anyway. Take your field that has been planted in corn, oats and peas, as soon as the stock has finished up what the mower left (we save all the pea vines we can for feed) . Now, turn under all stubble with a two-horse plow. If this is well done, it will decompose before planting time, if you finished with the plowing early enough, thereby adding much humus to the soil, as well as nitrogen stored there by the pea crop. ”

“ Two influences favor such undue dependence upon a disk harrow that a soil may become shallow: the cost of preparing the seed-bed is reduced, and the saving in moisture may give a better stand of plants when the harrow takes the place of the plow. The immediate productiveness of a crop is not an assurance that the method is right: consideration for the good of the land must be shown. Depth of soil is a requirement of a good agriculture, and deep plowing is a means to that end. ”

“ The depth of this soil affects the amount of available plant-food and water. The duration of time between deep plowings depends upon the soil and the crops. Experience shows that when land has been broken for corn or potatoes or beans or similar crop, the one plowing may be sufficient for a succeeding crop. If grass is not seeded with the succeeding crop, it is best to give another thorough plowing before seeding to grass in August if the soil is heavy, but in naturally loose soils a disk harrow makes a better seed-bed. ”

“ As the air becomes heated, the open spaces left by the plowing serve to hasten the escape of moisture. If a cover crop is plowed down late in the spring, the material in the bottom of the furrow makes the land less resistant to drouth because the union of the top soil with the subsoil is less perfect, and capillary attraction is retarded. It is usually good practice to sacrifice some of the growth of a cover crop, even when organic matter is badly needed, and to plow fairly early in the spring in order that the moisture supply may be conserved. ”

“ Where the rainfall comes chiefly in the summer, the summer fallow is less important in ordinary years than where the summers are dry and the winters wet. Only an absolutely clean fallow should be permitted.
The fertility of dry-farm soils must be maintained. Return the manure; plow under green leguminous crops occasionally and practice rotation. On fertile soils plants mature with the least water.
Sow only by the drill method. Wherever possible use fall varieties of crops. Plant deeply—three or four inches for grain. ”