The progressive farmer and southern farm gazette., April 30, 1910, LUGUME SPECIAL, Image 1

About The progressive farmer and southern farm gazette. (Starkville, Miss.) 1910-1920

Image provided by: Mississippi Department of Archives and History

                
Volume XV. No. 17.SATURDAY. APRIL 30,1910.Weekly: $1 a Year
The Open Road To Agricultural Prosperity.
ARMING will never make any country rich as long as the
farmers of that country have to bay nitrogen to feed their
\ staple crops. Nor will farming ever make any country rich
while the farmers of that country permit their soils to wash
away or to "wear out" for lack of a sufficient supply of humus.
Southern farmers are grievous offenders against good agri
cultural practice in both these respects. Every year they spend
millions of dollars for nitrogen in commercial forms when they
could have gathered enough for practically all of their crops
from the air. On millions of acres of cultivated land the crops
are limited each year by an insufficient water supply during
Urn _9 t. 4ft. _
it ry mjjctio unu uy
general tack of organic T
matter in the soil. Until
both these conditions are
changed, the Southern
! farmer is not going to get
as much as he should for
a day's work; is not going ^
to have as much as he
should at the end of year;
is not going to contribute
to the welfare of his corn•
munity and his Slate as he
might and should.
At once the surest and
the most economical way
to correct these evils is by
the growing of leguminous j
crops-'-not by the haphaz- t
ard planting of a pea patch ^
here or an alfalfa plot
there but bv the systematic
planting of both summer-and winter-growing legumes in a (
rotation adapted to individual conditions and surroundings.
The legumes will get nitrogen from the air, and save mil
lions of dollars now spent for commercial fertilizers; they will
add humus to the soil, improving its texture, increasing its
water-holding capacity, making more available the plant food
it contains, preventing gulleying, and making it easier to
work; they wilt supply the best and cheapest feeds in the
world, thus enabling the farmer to keep more stock and to
feed them better; they will increase the yields of all the staple
crops and enable the farmers to make a profit on thousands of
acres of land now idle and unprofitable; they will, in short,
if intelligently used, put the farmers of the South on the high
way to prosperity and independence.
To try to farm without them is, under all ordinary con
ditions, wanton folly; and the results of such farming are to
Roiling Down a Crt v of Cowpeaa to Turn Under They Shou’d Have Been Made Into Hay.
be seen today in worn-out fields, gullied hillsides, poor crops, j
poor stock and unattractive homes. ^
This issue is largely taken up with the exper - c of men
who have learned to make money growing legumes, and
what they have done every other farmer can, if he will.
There may be farmers who can make money without grow
ing these crops; but such men are rare, and there are very few
men in the South engaged in general farming who could not
increase their profits by planting them more liberally.
Let every reader resolve right now to raise an abundant
supply of legume forage for all his live stock---enough cow
« « m
ptsus unu soy oeans ana
peanuts for his pigs and
calves to graze on all sum
mer and fall, and enough
to make hay for all his
stock next winter. He will
want besides this to grow, if
possible, this year enough
seed for his own planting
next season. Let him also
crrange to seed ull lands
cultivated this season to a
cover crop next fall.
When he does this he
will not only make bigger
crops, but he will be able
to feed his work stock and
to make pork ar.d beef and
milk at the lowest cost. In
short, he will be on the
open road to prosperity
and independence.
>
FEATURES OF THIS ISSUE.
A Home-Made Brooder. 330
An Attack on the Live Stock
Sunitary Board . 327
Black Hot of Sweet Potatoes, 331
Cost of Seeding the Different
Legumes.32K
Four Bulletins Fvery House
wife Should Have. 320
How Peas and Clover Help
Make a Big Corn Crop. . . . 325 j
Lespedeza—A Neglected Crop 32S j
Less Meut and More Fruit. . . 323 ;
One Crop to Plow Under . . . 31S
Plant Some Soy Heuns Sure 320
Plant a Seed Corn Patch. . . . 321
Preparing for and Planting
Peanuts . 320
Southern Educational Confer
ence Notes . 329
ltesting Land. 318
The Legumes to Grow. 324
The Late Garden. 331
The South's Great Variety of
Legumes . 818
The "Typhoid Fly”.322
What Tillage is uml What It
Does .319
What I Did Not See. 817
Why Do We Work Poor Land? 821
"What’s the News?”. 825