Growing The Same Crop Continuously

To grow tbe saine erop upon a neld year af ter year is the very worst way of treating tbe soil. Every plant has its own peculiar habit of life. It feeds more heavily apon one substance thau apon another; it attacks the soil partióles in its own characteristio marmer; its peculiar root system will use only a certain portion of the soil, and only to a certain depth ; in short, it will exhaust the land, making it weak and worn in one way, leaving it fertile in all other ways. Wben new weeds settle upon the lands, tbose having habita different from the erop grown will find a rieh soil for their growth and will flourish, always with great detriment to the erop rlesired by the husbandman, and ofteu with its total destruction. The first consideration, tberefore, in a system of rotation of crops is to exhaust tbe soil as uniformly as possible. This rnay be done by following, for instance, a shallow rooted with a deep rooted erop in order to exhaust the upper and