Oats serves a double purpose;--provides to a certain extent a winter
protection against the porosity caused by alternate freezing and thawing
and its decay renders the soil mellow and easily worked.
During the winter a top dressing of stable manure is applied at the rate
of fifteen tons per acre and the oats and manure are plowed under just
as early as the soil can be worked the following spring. The manure
furnishes nitrogen, potassium and phosphorus in quantities which with
that already furnished by the rotation crops, makes a properly balanced
plant food.
Again it is worked and with spring tooth and disc harrows and rolled
until it forms a pulverized seed-bed and after being marked into rows
and cross marked, it is again ready for Kellogg Pedigree Plants.