EXAMPLES OF CROP ROTATION SYSTEMS IN CANADA, UNITED STATES, AND ELSEWHERE The list following includes the most common rotations employed in America, in Great Britain and parts of the continent, and some in other lands. The effort is not to make a complete list of all crop rotations in use : this would be useless, if indeed not impossible. The more common ones that have come under the writer's notice, and that will serve to show the importance generally attached to crop rotation in the farm management scheme, are given. The same rotation may be in use in many states, but it is given in one place, only where some special significance attaches. The rotations given under any state or province, for this reason, may not be the ones in general use ; the latter will be found elsewhere on the list. In most cases, however, the rotation or rotations are the ones most gener ally accepted. A few states have been omitted, as it has been impossible for the writer to secure any authentic record of rotations in use. These rota tions are made as a matter of record, not for recommendation ; nor is it to be understood that the persons cited as authorities necessarily recom mend them, nor have they furnished them all. These records cannot fail to be suggestive to the reader.
Ontario. (G. E. Day.) Ontario Agricultural College Report, 1905.
4-course : 1, Rutabagas, mangels, potatoes, corn, barley, oats or peas ; 2, fall-sown wheat, or spring sown oats or barley, and seeded to timothy and clover ; 3, meadow ; 4, meadow or pasture.
A modification of the above in use at Ontario Agricultural College is : 8-course : 1, Roots, corn or potatoes ; 2, fall sown wheat, or spring-sown oats or barley, with four pounds of timothy and eight pounds of red clover per acre, and sometimes a little alsike clover; 3, meadow ; 4, dwarf essex rape, land plowed and cultivated until June, rape sown and grazed ; 5, barley, oats or peas (spring-sown); 6, fall-sown wheat, or spring-sown oats or barley, with four pounds of timothy. eight pounds of red clover and
five to eight pounds of a mixture of orchard-grass, meadow fescue and tall oat-grass. The addition of the three latter grasses has proved of considerable value for pasture, enabling more stock to be car ried per acre than on timothy and clover alone ; 7, meadow ; 8, pasture or meadow, cut once and then grazed, it being usually arranged to have the area in pasture so that it may be grazed with the rape. When stock have access to both grass and rape at all times, better results are secured than from either alone. This land is manured and fall-plowed for the succeeding root crop.
J. H. Grisdale, Experimental Farms Report, 1905, pp. 77-89: 3-course: 1, Oats ; land plowed twice in previous fall, oats sown in spring and ten pounds of clover and ten pounds of timothy ; 2, clover hay, manured in fall ; 3, timothy hay or mixed clover and timothy.
3-course : 1, Oats ; land plowed twice in pre vious fall, and twelve pounds of timothy sown with oats; 2, timothy hay, land manured; 3, timothy hay.
3-course. Primarily for feeding hogs : 1, Roots, turnips, carrots, mangels, sugar-beets; sugar man gels are grown, part being pastured by hogs ; of these, mangels and sugar-beets were preferred by the hogs ; 2, grain (oats, etc., with peas), used for soiling or the peas pastured when ripe. Alfalfa or some other pasture crop is sown with the grain crop ; 3, hogs pastured on alfalfa or other crop, land manured and fall-plowed ready for the root crop.
3-course. Suitable for farmer having consider able rough pasture and desiring to keep consider able stock. Roots might be grown in place of some of the corn : 1, Corn, land manured and plowed the previous fall, depth of plowing about five inches. The land is again fall-plowed when the corn is cut; 2, grain, oats or barley spring-sown, with ten pounds of red clover, one pound of alsike clover, five pounds of timothy ; 3, hay, mown twice, and manured and fall-plowed for succeeding corn crop.