He may utilize it in any way, even to selling the resulting seed crop, provided all the remaining brush is turned back to the land and a portion of the money he receives for the seed be reinvested in high-grade potash and phosphatic manures. The plantation should now be in fair condition for a corn crop, and, as a very slight shading is not prejudicial to the young palms, the corn can be planted close enough to the trees, leaving only sufficient space to admit of the free cultivation that both require.
It must not be forgotten that corn makes the most serious inroads upon our soil fertility of any of the crops in our rotation, and, unless by this time the planter is prepared to feed all the grain produced to fatten swine or cattle, it had better be eliminated from the rotation and peanuts substituted. In addition to this, he must still make good whatever drains the corn will have made upon this element of soil fertility.
Cropping to corn attacks the cocoanut at a new and vulnerable point, against which the careful grower must make provision. It will be remembered that an average corn crop makes very considerable drafts upon the soil supply of phosphoric acid; but, if the grain is used for fattening swine, whose manure is much richer in phosphates than most farm manures, and the latter is restored to the land, serious soil impoverishment may be averted.
The next step in our suggested rotation is the cotton crop. Here, too, limitations are imposed upon the planter who is without abundant manurial resources to maintain the future integrity of his grove. He may sell the lint from his cotton, but he can not dispose of it (as is frequently done here) in the seed.
If the enterprise be not upon a scale that will justify the equipment of a mill and the manufacture of the oil, he has no alternative but to return the seed in lieu of the seed cake, wasteful and extravagant though such a process be.
The oil so returned is without manurial value and, if left in the seed, is so much money wasted. The rational process, of course, calls for the return of the press cake, either direct or in the form of manure after it has been fed. With this is also secured the hull, rich in both the potash and the phosphoric acid[3] which we now know is so essential to the future welfare of the grove.
The above rotation is simply suggested as a tentative expedient.
The ground will now be so shaded that we can not hope to raise more catch crops for harvesting, although it may be possible during the dry season to raise a partial stand of pulses, of manure value only; but, from the fruiting stage on, this becomes a minor consideration.
This stage of the cultural story brings us once more face to face with the principle contended for at the beginning of this paper, namely, that there can be no permanent prosperity in this branch of horticulture until the crop is so worked up into its ultimate products that none of the residue of manufacture goes to waste.
At best the return of these side products is insufficient, and, despite their careful husbandry, we can not ultimately evade a greater or less resort to inorganic manures of high cost and difficult procurement.