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24 FIELD OPERATIONS OF THE BUREAU OF SOILS, 1915.
Possibly one-half or more of the type is in cultivation, the remainder
being largely in pasture. Much of the land is covered with catclaw,
cedar, and shin oak, and grasses. The principal crops are
cotton and the grain sorghums, with some corn and small patches of
garden crops.
This soil warms up earlier in the spring than do the heavier textured
types, and crops mature somewhat more quickly, though owing
to the character of the crops grown at present this feature is of no
particular importance. The type withstands drought better than the
heavier soils.
The crop yields on the Brackett fine sandy loam are approximately
one-fifth to three-fourths bale of cotton and 10 to 30 bushels of
sorghum grain per acre. The minor crops produce correspondingly
variable yields, the returns depending largely on the amount of
rainfall.
The land for summer crops is prepared usually in February, or
earlier in the winter, and corn and grain sorghums are planted in
March. Cotton, as a rule, is planted in April. Wheat and oats
usually are seeded in October, though sometimes oats are sown in
February or March. The preparation of the seed bed in most cases
consists of shallow plowing or disking, followed by harrowing.
Commercial fertilizers are not used, but a green crop is plowed under
occasionally to supply organic matter, in which the type is usually
deficient.
In sections in which the Brackett fine sandy loam occurs land
values range from about $15 to $35 an acre.
Under present conditions of low average yields of cotton it would
seem better to grow grain sorghums, such as milo, kafir, and feterita,
and grasses such as Sudan grass and Johnson grass, in connection
with stock raising. Elsewhere under almost identical climatic and
soil conditions, peanuts and artichokes are grown and utilized as hog
pasture.
BRACKETT LOAM.
The Brackett loam consists of a grayish-brown to dark ashy gray
loam, underlain at about 6 to 8 inches by grayish to yellowish-brown
clay, which, in turn, passes into grayish-yellow or whitish, chalky,
highly calcareous material. The surface material in places is somewhat
sandy, being influenced by colluvial wash from sandy types,
and in places it includes an admixture of small limestone fragments
and quartz, chert, and other pebbles.
Some small areas of silty clay loam, rather darker in color on the
whole than the typical Brackett loam, are included with the type
because of their small extent. This silty clay is somewhat more difficult
to cultivate under extreme wet or dry conditions than the loam,