Word: kudzu
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...doctrine of soil conservation has taken deep root in the South. Farmers plant less land to cotton, more to grass and legumes. They terrace their steeper fields skillfully, plow on the contour instead of up & down hill. On thousands of once sterile slopes, the miraculous vine, kudzu, clambers like Jack's beanstalk. It chokes devouring gullies with entangled soil. It buries fences, leaps into trees. Its big leaves, which stay green until Christmas, are as nourishing to cattle as excellent alfalfa. When plowed under, kudzu enriches the soil...
...conservation districts," each choosing its officers in a democratic election, and running its own affairs. Bennett's experts would help the districts as "land doctors." In their kits they had a dazzling array of medicines. For gullies, they described cheap, home-made dams and new plants, such as kudzu vine, to hold the sliding soil. For hilly fields they prescribed novel methods of contour plowing, strip planting, terracing. For run-down soils, they recommended cover crops and suitable fertilizers. They would survey and test a whole district, then tell farmers how to make soil more productive...
Last week the magazine Country Book reported that kudzu may revolutionize southern farming. Already the kudzu cult has a radio program (on Atlanta's WAGA) and an organization of more than 1,000 ardent growers, the Kudzu Club of America, Inc. Chief kudzu-cultists are two well-known Georgia gentleman farmers, Channing Cope, a onetime utility man, and Cason Callaway, retired textile manufacturer...
...Kudzu is an old Japanese plant, grown in the Orient for its edible tubers (roots) and hemp-like fiber. In the U.S., where it was first grown in 1895, it has been known chiefly as a fast-growing porch vine. But southern farmers now cultivate it as a field plant to cover eroding soil. Planted from "crowns" (roots and buds), it spreads quickly, putting down new roots like strawberry runners. Its big leaves, shed each fall, eventually cover the ground with a thick, flaky carpet like a forest floor. Because it may be winterkilled by hard frosts...
...Kudzu not only stops erosion but so enriches the soil that when plowed under, it increases corn yields by two to sevenfold. As rich as alfalfa in protein and carotene, kudzu leaves can be used for grazing or cut as hay. Dehydrated, they also make a fine breakfast food, according to enthusiasts; some kudzu growers have gone so far as to concoct a recipe for Kudzup...