A SYSTEMATIC ROTATION OF CROPS

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1618, 4 March 1903, Page 64

A SYSTEMATIC ROTATION OF CROPS

Extract from a discourse delivered before a Michigan farmers’ institute • by Mr A. E. Palmer: A systematic rotation of crops may not be a panacea for all the ills incident to agriculture, but it will go a long way in helping many of us out of difficulties which often confront us in our agricultural operations. Too many of us, allured with the small amount of labour involved, have for many years been following a grain and grass rotation, i.e., wheat, oats and timothy, until we have reached a point on many of our richest lands where the crops refused to be remunerative because of soil depletion, and we are obliged to rearrange our system of cropping or seek other locations. Others of us have been adapting our crops to the basis of prevailing prices year after year, paying little or no attention to any particular rotation. This, too, has proven a loss of original capital, rather than a short road to wealth. Several crops alone, no matter how promising they may he, are not going to help us out of present conditions. Such crops should be handled with care. They zltq expensive trO raise, because they demand the best land, intensive cultivation and most manures, at the expense of other parts of the farm, using only part of the farmer’s capital (soil fertility) while a proper rotation would use all, with less waste and better results.

The length of a rotation is of less moment than the character of the crops making up the rotation. No uniform plan is adapted to all parts of our state, because of our widely different conditions! —soil's, markets and transportation charges. The peculiar environments and individual tastes of each farmer must decide for himself. It is the object of this paper to offer a few suggestions, which should be carefully considered before deciding upon the best form of crop rotation to adopt.

Light, sandy soils require a shorter rotation than - heavy clays or rich, alluvial soils, hut naturally rich lands which have been depleted in fertility by mismanagement may be most quickly restored to original conditions by a short rotation, and on any class of soils w>e take less chances of failure of crons with a short than with a longer rotation. However, science and. the best practice seem to be thoroughly agreed that a rotation which includes the clovers, cereals, hoed crops and live stock may be safely adopted in any part of the country.

All farm crops are" dependent largely upon the three principal elements of plant food, nitrogen, potash and the phosphates, but they differ widely m the amount of the different foods they take up, and do not use the elements in any like proportion. While the fjuit tree or the potato plant draws largely upon the potash, the wheat and barley demand more of the nitrates and phosphates; hence it is not good policy that two such grain crops should follow in succession, preferably some other crop using largely that element of plant food not excessively used by the previous crop. So also two hoed-crops succeeding one another have additional disadvantages, notably the bare ground of fall and winter, the danger of surface washing, the waste of nitrates resultant from first year’s tillage, when not followed by a crop having the ability to take up and use them. Again, some plants have the power of taking up and storing plant food for future use. The clover and pea, while profitably followed by a corn or wheat large users of nitrates, can be most crop, either of which requires a large amount of this particular food. Plants also differ in the length of their feeding roots. Some feed near tiie surface others go deep into The subsoil, and it would seem to be good policy that a surface feeder should follow a deep feeder, and thus use all the soil. :<

The length of time necessary to mature crops varies greatly. Some use buta short time, others the entire season, apd it is possible that there would be some advantage in the following of a short by a long feeding crop. So. too, the methods of growing the crops should enter into our calculations. Sonic are cultivated, others are not. The corn crop has been properly called a fallow crop. In a well handled crop cf corn we not only kill the weeds, hut put the

ground in excellent condition for a succeeding crop of wheat. In a systematic rotation we are constantly changing our treatment of the soil, and do not give the weeds a chance to grow and mature their seeds as in case of repetition of same or similar crops, nor are we as likely to suffer from the ravages of insects and destructive fungus diseases, for the longer a field remains in one crop the more favourable it is for insects and diseases preying upon that particular crop. In making up rotation we should not forget that nature’s method of furbishing nitrogen to the soil is through the growth of leguminous plants. 1 doubt whether we can improve upon nature’s plan, and hence believe that no rotation is complete without at least ono leguminous crop.

In a short rotation, some additional advantages accrue —for instance, if it be corn, wheat and clover, in most conditions one ploughing will answer an economy of labour, fco, too, machinery in this rotation assists us in being able to grow and harvest a large acreage with a minimum of hand labour, for each crop is out of the way of the succeeding one. Such a rotation necessitates more stock being fed upon the farm. This means more manure, more humus, better preservation of moisture, less danger from drought, stronger plant vitality, richer soils. Any rotation suggests a better maintenance of fertility, more system in farm management. more even distribution of manures and tillage, and more steady employment throughout the year.