Crops That May Precede

Categories: GRASS SODS

Farms that are under common crop-rotations may

adopt the practice of August seeding. The winter wheat comes off in

time for preparation, and this is true of an early variety of oats, and

of rye and barley. Early crops of vegetables get out of the way nicely.

There is a vast total area of thin soil that may be brought up to a

productive stage rapidly by the growth of a green-manuring crop to

precede the grass and clover Rye may be sown in the fall and plowed

down in May, and cowpeas planted to be disked into the soil. Oats and

Canada peas add organic matter with nitrogen when plowed down. The

summer fallow, which deservedly has fallen into general disuse, may

well be employed when a soil is in an inert state, provided grass and

clover be permitted to appropriate the plant-food made soluble by the

fallowing. The catch crops add organic matter while cleansing the land

of weeds; the fallowing releases plant-food and is peculiarly efficient

in killing out weeds.



Care must be exercised about preserving moisture in the ground, and

therefore a green crop should not be plowed under immediately before

seeding time. When a soil is thin, there may be no better preparatory

crop than the cowpea, which will not make too rank a growth in the

north to prevent its handling with a weighted disk harrow. By this

means the soil below is left firm, and the rich vines are mixed with

the surface soil, where most needed. It is always a mistake to bury

fertility in the bottom of the furrow when a soil is thin and small

seeds are to be sown. The infertile ground lying next the subsoil is

not what is needed at the surface when preparing for a sod.



It is a good practice to use the early summer in making conditions

better for an August seeding, if the land has fallen below a profitable

state of productiveness. A growth may be plowed down in time for

firming the seed-bed, or it may be cut into the surface soil with a

harrow, or the time may be used in freeing inert plant-food and

destroying weed seed. On better soils, and in warm latitudes, a crop

for hay may be removed, especially in the case of the cowpea in the

south, and the stubble prepared for seeding by use of the cutaway or

disk harrow.