ROTATION OF CROPS
They are eating dinner at the farm. A large platter of pork cutlets and
beans is smoking in the center of the table. Every one has been served.
It is a pleasure to see these good people eat, they have such hearty
appetites. Jacques, the big ox-driver, is the first to finish. He
throws his bone away. Azor is there to seize it. He lies flat on his
stomach and takes the bone in his fore paws. Hear him bite on his hard
pittance. How it cracks! Let any one beware of teasing Azor now. An
angry growl and a baring of his four formidable canine teeth would warn
the rash intruder to have done with his joking at once, for if
not—well, I will not be responsible for the consequences. Azor is not a
surly dog; far from it; but he is well within his rights when he brooks
no nonsense at his meals. He has done his duty most valiantly as a dog.
Night before last some wolves were prowling about the sheep-fold, and
he drove them off. Let Azor gnaw his bone in peace.
Ha, there! The big tortoise-shell cat, Master Minet, is otherwise
minded. He draws near, hair erect, tail as large around as your arm, to
try to frighten Azor and rob him of his allowance. Azor, without
dropping the bone, gives a low growl and lifts one paw. That is enough,
the cat flees. So, my bold Minet, what were you after here? The bone is
not for you; your teeth are not strong enough to bite it. Go away!
Martha is calling you to give you some bread soaked in gravy. That will
suit you better than a bone as hard as a stone.
Ah, here come some more guests. The door stands open and in come the
hens from the poultry-yard. Tap, tap, tap, tap; they peck the crumbs
fallen from the table. Azor has no use for such diet—tiny morsels much
too small for him; nor does the cat want them either, they are too
floury. But the hens feast on them.
And all, human beings, dog, cat, hens, dine at the same time; only each
must make the best of what the others cannot use. Azor is content with
the bone that big Jacques threw away; the cat is satisfied with a
little bread soaked in gravy, a dish quite inadequate to Azor’s needs;
the hens pick up the crumbs disdained by Jacques, Azor, and the cat.
Martha, it seems, had prepared dinner only for the farm people, and
behold, by utilizing the scraps that are worthless to some, many others
join in the midday meal. From the scraps disdained by man the dog will
gain strength to defend the flock; from those rejected by the dog the
cat will acquire keen eyesight and sharp claws to see and to seize the
mouse; from what is of no value to the cat the hens will make eggs; and
everything, absolutely everything, will go to the profit of the farm.
“Agriculture in its turn,” remarked Uncle Paul, turning to account this
homely illustration in domestic economy, “prepares dinner for the crops
in its own peculiar manner. It spreads the ground with manure, that
fertile dressing so relished by growing plants. The table is set, or in
other words the field is ready, well plowed and harrowed, and well
manured. Whom shall we call first to the table, for it is plain we
cannot invite all at once. Whom shall we call first? It shall be wheat,
let us say, a plant with tastes hard to please, but one that in return
gives us bread. So wheat is sown. In this soil, full of all sorts of
good things, it cannot fail to thrive, however unfavorable the season
may be. It will select what suits it best and leave the rest.
“Now that is done. The harvest is in, and it handsomely comes up to our
hopes. The wheat has converted into magnificent grain the fertilizer
put into the ground. Out of decay it has created nourishment. Surely it
has well acquitted itself of its charge. It has made a clean sweep: all
that could be turned into wheat it has appropriated, and there remains
nothing further to be done. What would happen, then, if wheat were sown
again in the same field? Exactly the same thing that would happen to
Simon if he had nothing to eat but the bone that Jacques threw away. He
would die of hunger. Simon must have man’s food, wheat must have
wheat’s food. So if the first crop has exhausted the supply of material
for making wheat, how can you expect to raise a second crop? Evidently
that is asking the impossible; it is running the risk of reaping only a
very mediocre harvest or even none at all. Therefore it is the rule not
to sow wheat twice in succession in the same field. And what is true of
wheat is true also of all other crops. Where a plant has prospered one
year, the same plant will not do well the second year, because the
ingredients required by this plant are more or less exhausted. It is
foolish to invite guests to a table that is stripped bare.
“If the table were spread again, if more fertilizer were added to the
soil, that would be quite a different matter, and wheat would grow as
well as it did the first time. But such a procedure would be bad
management, for the very utmost should be made of one meal. Before
further expenditure in the way of fertilizer let us exhaust the virtue
of the fertilizer already applied. Azor dined well on what Jacques
discarded; the hens were well fed with what Azor and the cat left. Let
us take an example from this succession of eaters who utilize each in
his own way the remnants worthless to the others. The wheat has
exhausted, or nearly exhausted, all that is suitable for wheat; but
just as Jacques the ox-driver left the bone, it has left in the soil a
good many ingredients that make excellent food for other crops. In
order, therefore, to utilize to the last ounce the first spreading of
fertilizer, we must invite to the repast a guest of different tastes.
This guest may be, for example, the potato. In soil that would have
furnished but starvation diet for wheat the potato will find quite
enough to live on, its tastes not being the same as the cereal’s.
“Thus we have two successive crops for one coating of manure: we have
sacks of potatoes with no additional outlay in fertilizer. Is that all?
Not yet. After the wheat and the potatoes there is, to be sure, but
meager nourishment left in the upper layer of the soil; but in the
lower layers there remains the part of the fertilizer that the rain has
washed down and dissolved and that the short roots of the preceding
crops could not reach. To utilize this underlying matter and bring it
up again to the surface in the form of forage let us now sow a plant
with vigorous roots, such as clover, sainfoin, or, still better,
lucerne, which will penetrate deeper. And so we get our third crop.
“After clover we can try a fourth crop, of a different kind; but it is
evident that as the guests succeed one another at the same table the
remnants become more and more scanty and difficult to utilize.
Accordingly we must choose a hardy plant and one that is content with
little. Finally a time will come, and at no very distant date, when the
board will be bare: the coating of manure will have given up its last
particle of nutritious matter. Then the table must be garnished afresh,
the field fertilized anew before beginning again with the same crops or
attempting others. Let us demand no more. You understand, my young
friends, that in order to utilize to the utmost this precious substance
that gives us every kind of food, such as bread, vegetables, forage,
meat, fruit, dairy products—to make the very best use of this we must,
instead of raising the same crop in the same field year after year,
adopt the plan of varying our crops, changing from one of one kind to
another of a different character, so that what earlier plantings have
left in the soil may be turned to account by later ones. This
succession of different sorts of farm produce is called rotation of
crops.”