“I do not doubt it,” said the Deacon; “but would it not be better to let the crop grow a few months longer, and then plow it under?”
“But that is not the point,” I remarked; “we sometimes adopt a rotation when Indian-corn follows a crop of wheat. In such a case, good farmers sometimes plow the land in the fall, and again the next spring, and then plant corn. This is one method. But I have known, as I said before, good farmers to seed down the wheat with clover; and the following spring, say the third week in May, plow under the young clover, and plant immediately on the furrow. If the land is warm, and in good condition, you will frequently get clover, by this time, a foot high, and will have two or three tons of succulent vegetation to turn under; and the farmer who first recommended the practice to me, said that the cut-worms were so fond of this green-clover that they did not molest the young corn-plants. I once tried the plan myself, and found it to work well; but since then, I have kept so many pigs and sheep, that clover has been too useful to plow under. But we will not discuss this point at present.
“What I wanted to say is this: Here we have a field in wheat. Half of it (A) we seed down with 12 lbs. of clover-seed per acre; the other half (B) not. The clover-seed and sowing on A, cost, say, $2 per acre. We plow B in the fall; this will cost us about as much as the clover seed sown on A. In the spring, A and B are both plowed and planted to corn. Now, which half of the field will be in the cleanest and best condition, and which will produce the best corn, and the best barley, or oats, afterwards?”
“I vote for A,” said the Deacon.
“I vote for A,” said the Doctor.
“I vote for A,” said the Squire.
“I should think,” modestly suggested Charley, “that it would depend somewhat on the soil,” and Charley is right. On a clean, moderately rich piece of light, sandy soil, I should certainly expect much better corn, and better barley or oats, on A, where the clover was grown, than on B. But if the field was a strong loam, that needed thorough cultivation to get it mellow enough for corn, I am inclined to think that B would come out ahead. At any rate, I am sure that on my own farm, moderately stiff land, if I was going to plant corn after wheat, I should not seed it down with clover. I would plow the wheat stubble immediately after harvest, and harrow and cultivate it to kill the weeds, and then, six weeks or two months later, I would plow it again. I would draw out manure in the winter, pile it up in the field to ferment, and the next spring spread it, and plow it under, and then—
“And then what?” asked the Deacon. —“Why the truth is,” said I, “then I would not plant corn at all. I should either sow the field to barley, or drill in mangel-wurzel or Swede-turnips. But if I did plant corn, I should expect better corn than if I had sown clover with the wheat; and the land, if the corn was well cultivated, would be remarkably clean, and in fine condition; and the next time the land was seeded down with clover, we could reasonably expect a great crop.”
The truth is, that clover-seed is sometimes a very cheap manure, and farmers are in no danger of sowing too much of it. I do not mean sowing too much seed per acre, but they are in no danger of sowing too many acres with clover. On this point, there is no difference of opinion. It is only when we come to explain the action of clover—when we draw deductions from the facts of the case—that we enter a field bristling all over with controversy.