Forage crop

“ When the seed is ripe the tops can be clipped, and the straw left until fall to mature. You now have your seed and hay in two crops of equal value; in case of clover, you mow the first crop for hay, the second for seed; you in both cases get better seed and hay with less labor and expense than grain crops, at the same time leaving the soil clothed with a coat of straw, for the coming season, which will increase the value of the soil for crops, make fine pastures and fine stock, while it fits the land for fine grain. ”

“ Good herbage will grow on bog thus treated, but as much as possible should at once be put into root-crops, with farmyard manure for potatoes and turnips. The more lime you give the better will be your crop, and, treated thus, there is no doubt that even during the first year, land so reclaimed will yield remunerative crops. People ask, ‘But will not the whole thing go back to bog?’ Of course it will if not kept under proper rotation, which we find to be one of five years—namely, roots followed by oats, laid down with clover and grass seed, which remains for two years. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In ordinary farming, “larger crops per acre” means fewer acres planted or sown with grain. It means more summer fallow, more grass, clover, peas, mustard, coleseed, roots, and other crops that are consumed on the farm. It means more thorough cultivation. It means clean and rich land. It means husbanding the ammonia and nitric acid, which is brought to the soil, as well as that which is developed from the soil, or which the soil attracts from the atmosphere, and using it to grow a crop every second, third, or fourth year, instead of every year. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The portion of the farm reduced in productive power for the moment goes to grass, while the labor and fertilizers are concentrated upon the fields that are broken for grain and vegetables. The removal of all the crop at harvest, and probably the pasturing of after-math, are the only matters of interest that the fields, depleted by cultivation and seeded down to grass, have for the owner until the poor hay yield and the need of a sod for corn draw attention again to them. ”

“ Cleaned by the tillage that has gone before, the ground is no longer covered with grass and weeds. Nor does it need fresh manure, for if the potatoes have consumed certain elements in the soil, these are not exactly the same that wheat requires; and, furthermore, the dead plants, turned under and reduced to vegetable mold, compensate by what they have derived from the atmosphere for what the tubers may have taken from the soil. Wheat is therefore just the crop to raise now. ”

“ Harrow in lime at this season, or on spring ploughed ground, for corn; and do not spread it on your fallows for wheat; because it is then injurious to your winter grain crop; as frequent experience has shown. Mark out your squares or drills, lightly, with the plough; and thereafter never suffer the plough to enter your fields. Work entirely with harrows; whereof procure the necessary variety; some with large, and others with smaller hoes. These cut up weeds, and sufficiently stir your intervals to any depth you choose. ”

“ 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. ”

“ More attention was then paid to corn, but without fertilizers the corn-crop also became very meagre. At last it was discovered that English clover would grow on even the exhausted fields, and that when ploughed under and planted with corn, or even wheat, wonderful crops were raised. This caused a complete change in farming methods; the farmers raised fertilizing clover, planted corn, and fed the crop to cattle and hogs. ”

“ Early maturing varieties can be brought in between main crops of the rotation in warm latitudes. The growth prevents the leaching of plant-food, shades the ground, adds nitrogen to the soil, smothers weeds, and produces material that is valuable as feed for livestock or an addition of organic matter to the soil. When the time that can be devoted to the crop is short, an early variety should be selected because its vines are far more valuable to the soil than an equal volume of a rank-growing variety that is not near maturity. ”

“ We must conclude that the wheat can not get food enough from the soil to yield a maximum crop, not because there is not food enough in the field, but the roots of the wheat are so constituted that they can not gather it up; while clover-roots, foraging in the same soil, can find all they want. ”

“ In the fall, the summer's accumulation in hog-pens and barn cellars is spread upon the mowing grounds, and a liberal supply of muck carted in and spread in the bottoms of the cellars, ready for the season for stabling cattle. When this is well saturated with the drippings of the stables, a new supply is added. The accumulation of the winter is usually applied to the land for the corn crop, except the finer portion, which is used to top-dress meadow land. ”

“ Some Land is very subject to the Misfortune of exposing the Roots, and therefore is less proper for Wheat; for when the Roots are left bare to the Air, they will be shrivelled, and unable to support the Plants: And on such Land the Wheat plants have all fallen down, though in Number and Bigness not sufficient to have produced the Fourth Part of a tolerable Crop, if they had stood. I am inclined to believe, that a thorough Tillage might be a Remedy to such a loose hollow Soil ”

“ Non-leguminous crops may also be plowed under for the purpose of adding organic matter and humus to the soil, though this has little advantage over the present method of heading the grain and plowing under the high stubble. The header system should be generally adopted on wheat dry-farms. On farms where corn is the chief crop, perhaps more importance needs to be given to the supply of organic matter and humus than on wheat farms. ”

“ Every year furnishes some organic matter for the soil in roots and stubble, and all the produce of four years out of the five may be fed on the farm. There is one cash crop, or two if the price of the clear timothy hay justifies sale.
The manure may be hauled upon the sod when other work does not press, and it goes where the crop is one that prefers fresh manure, be that the grass or the corn. There is plenty of time after the corn to prepare for oats, and after the oats to prepare for wheat. The preparation for the wheat is sufficient for the clover and timothy. ”

“ The planting may be made soon after the usual time of planting corn, or whenever the ground has become warm. The preparation of the soil should be more thorough than that often given the cowpea. Solid drilling of five pecks of seed per acre is satisfactory when the crop is for fertilizing purposes only, and gives an excellent hay on land free of weeds. When the crop is wanted for hay, however, wheat usually will follow, and it is much better to plant in rows and to give two or three cultivations so that the ground may be easily prepared for the wheat.
A seed crop should be grown in rows. ”

“ I believe these lands would make a great deal if we understood the cutting and curing of hay, for the grass grows most luxuriantly if the land is ploughed and left, but the curing of hay is unknown to the rice-field darky. 68
Our uplands are very fertile and adapted to any crop, it seems. Last year a few tried cotton and did very well without any commercial fertilizer. The only trouble is the nice cultivation cotton requires. ”

“ Cut when the grain is fairly out of the milk, and cure it like hay. Four tons is a fair yield—two tons is a small crop.
Indian Corn should be sown broadcast at the rate of four to five bushels to the acre. Corn belongs to the tribe of grasses. Cultivating it for the grain, in rows, with every stimulant of air, light, and manure, develops the stalk almost to a tree form. When sown for fodder, the object should be to produce it, as nearly as possible, like a grass. Thick sowing will tend to do it, and each stalk being small and tender, the crop will be easily masticated by cattle. ”

“ 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. ”

“ We grow too many weeds. Mr. Lawes plowed the land twice every year; and the crop was hoed once or twice in the spring to kill the weeds.
2d. We do not half work our heavy land. We do not plow it enough—do not cultivate, harrow, and roll enough. I have put wheat in on my own farm, and have seen others do the same thing, when the drill on the clay-spots could not deposit the seed an inch deep. There is “plant-food” enough in these “clay-spots” to give 17 bushels of wheat per acre—or perhaps 40 bushels—but we shall not get ten bushels. ”

“ It is impossible, thus, except by a ruinous expenditure of fertilizer, to raise a crop of grain every year on the same land. But if we should let potatoes succeed wheat, and wheat succeed potatoes, what would be the result? The latter crop, deriving a large part of its nourishment from the air, would flourish in soil comparatively exhausted by wheat ”

“ 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. ”

“ First, In the former, the Land is by the Number of sown Plants and Weeds much more (we may suppose at least Five times more) exhausted: And, Secondly, No Pulveration is continued to the Soil, whilst the Crop is on it; which is that Part of the Year wherein is the most proper (if not the only proper) Season for pulverizing. Therefore, allowing, that, in the random way, a Soil cannot, for want of Quantity of vegetable Food, continue to produce annual Crops without Manure, or perhaps with it; yet that is no Reason why it may not produce them in the Hoeing Culture duly performed. ”

“ Besides, I have not attempted to estimate the value of raising almost maximum yields, where weather conditions are unfavorable, by such drainage, preparation of soil, planting and tillage as will best suit local and climatic conditions. No crop emphasizes the value of seed selection in such unmistakable terms as corn. The average stand of this crop does not exceed 60 percent, which means that the farmer spends 40 percent of his time in the cornfield without result. ”

“ In contrast, there are others who read and theorize too exclusively, and are inclined to assert that concentrated fertilizers supersede all others. They scout the muck swamp, the compost heap, and even the barnyard, as old-fashioned, cumbrous methods of bringing to the soil, in tons of useless matter, the essentials which they can deliver in a few sacks or barrels. On paper, they are scientific and accurate. The crop you wish to raise has constituents in certain proportions. ”

“ You could get most out of the land you mention during the hot season by growing Kafir corn or milo, cutting for hay before the plant gets too far advanced. If your land can be flooded and takes water well, so that you can wet it deeply before plowing, the sorghum seed can be broadcast and the crop cut with the mower while the stalks are not more than half an inch in diameter. ”

“ It will grow on any ordinary garden soil which is well drained, but, when possible, heavy subsoil with light sand or loam above it should be selected, as it will invariably produce an earlier crop each year than heavy ground. The soil should slope to the south or southwest, and a shelter from the northeast is also desirable. For our large market bed we used land that had been under cultivation for two years. The 113 preceding crops had been corn, oats and potatoes, so it had been thoroughly worked. ”