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Updated: June 13, 2025
Thornton, "you say the cowpea grows when nitrification is most active, and yet you say that it takes less nitrogen from the air than clover. Isn't that somewhat contradictory?" "I think not," said Percy." Let me see. Just what do you understand by nitrification?" "Getting nitrogen from the air, is it not?" "No, no. That explains it. Getting nitrogen from the air is called nitrogen fixation.
The writers opinion is that the word comes from Louisana where now the Creole French takes his turn of corn to mill and has it ground into what the American calls "grits," but the Frenchman of Lousiana, calls it "cous cous." At one time the Confederate government experimented with a mixture of cowpea flour and wheat flour, for the making of a nourishing hard tack.
I've got some pretty good cowpeas you'll pass by. I haven't got them off the racks yet." Percy found the cowpea hay piled in large shocks over tripods made of short stout poles which served to keep the hay off the ground to some extent, and this permitted the cowpeas to be cured in larger piles and with less danger of loss from molding.
"The cowpea is an annual plant. It is planted, produces its seed, and dies the same season. It has no need to store up material in the roots for future use. Consequently the substance of the root is largely taken into the tops as the plan approaches maturity. It is different with the clover plant. This is a biennial with some tendency toward the perennial plant.
Perhaps 210 pounds would be nearer the truth, in which case the soil would furnish about half as much nitrogen to the cowpea crop as to the corn crop. This is reasonable considering that corn is the first crop grown after the manure is applied. You will remember that only one-tenth of the total nitrogen of the cowpea plant remains in the roots and stubble?" "Yes, that's what we figured on."
"It should be kept in mind, of course, that the red clover has one kind of nitrogen-fixing bacteria, that the cowpea has a different kind, and that the soy bean bacteria are still different, while a fourth kind lives on the roots of alfalfa and sweet clover." "How much infected sweet clover soil would I need to inoculate an acre of land for alfalfa?" asked Mr. West.
In other words it would take six tons of such fertilizer to replace the nitrogen removed from one acre of land in four years if the crop yields were fifty bushels of corn and oats, twenty-five bushels of wheat, and two tons of cowpea hay." "Six tons! Why, that would cost a hundred and fifty dollars!
For more than two hours they had been standing, leaning, or sitting in a field beside a shock of cowpea hay, Percy toying with his soil auger, and Mr. Thornton making records now and then in his pocket note book. PERCY took a lesson in turning the cream separator and after dinner Mrs.
I remember you figured 86 pounds of nitrogen in two tons of cowpea hay, but you also assumed that about 29 pounds of it would be taken from the soil." "Yes, that is true," Percy replied, "at least 29 pounds and probably more. You see the cowpeas grow during the same months as corn and on land prepared in about the same manner.
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