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A Southern Legume

Categories: THE COWPEA

The soils of the cold north are protected from

leaching during the winter by the action of frost. The plant-food is

locked up safely for another year when nature ceases her work of

production for the year. Farther south, in the center of the corn belt,

there are leaching periods in fall and spring and oftentimes during the

winter, but winter wheat thrives and, in ordinary crop-rotations,

covers much of the land that mi
ht otherwise lose plant-food. As we

pass from the northern to the southern states, the preservation of soil

fertility grows more difficult and at the same time the restoration of

humus becomes easier. The heat makes easy the change of organic matter

to soluble forms, and the rains cause waste, but the climate favors

plants that replace rapidly what is lost. In the work of supplying land

with fertility, directly and indirectly, the southern cowpea has an

important place. It is to the south what red clover is to the north,

and it overlaps part of the red-clover belt, having a rightful place as

far north as the Ohio Valley, and portions of Pennsylvania.



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