A Southern Legume

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 might 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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