The Temple substation of Texas Agricultural Experiment Station, known as the Blackland Experiment Station, was founded in 1913 as the fifth of these substations. It was originally located between Temple and Belton, and was moved to its present location two miles south of Temple in 1928. The Station property adjoins famed McCloskey Hospital. It is operated cooperatively with the Research Division of the U. S. Soil Conservation Service, and has done major work in research on soil conservation, including soil erosion, terracing, and contour farming, as well as on the chemistry and physical structure of the Blackland soils of Texas.

The Blackland Experiment Station is dedicated to studing and dealing with the problems of the Texas black waxy lands. Experimental control plats are in the foreground.

Henry O. Hill has been with the Blackland Station since 1931, first as S. C. S. project supervisor, and as superintendent from 1940 on. He is a native of North Carolina, graduate of that state's university, and comes naturally by his interest in soil conservation work. His father was a classmate of Dr. H. H. Bennett, head of the U. S. Soil Conservation Service.

At this Station it would make one dizzy trying to keep up with individual crop plats, for there are 3500 such divisions on the 547-acre Blackland Station. Much of the Station acreage is devoted to cotton, work in variety tests, and studies in the control of Phymatotricum root rot, angular leaf spot, and sore shin diseases of cotton. These studies include the use of seed treatments, cover crops, rotations, and soil amendments.

Henry O. Hill, Station Superintendent, points to runoff and erosion measurement devices at the foot of a sloping cotton plat.

Root rot is one of the most serious cotton disease problems of the Blacklands, estimated to cost farmers of the area millions of dollars annually. It has been established through tests on this Station that hubam clover is the best medicine for it. In this area where root rot commonly kills 60 per cent of the cotton, the rotation of hubam clover one year followed by cotton has reduced the loss from root rot to about five per cent. If cotton is planted on this same land for the second consecutive year, the beneficial results of the hubam clover disappear, and the root rot loss goes back up to about 40 percent.

Hubam clover in two-year rotation with cotton increases cotton production 50 to 100 percent over cotton after cotton, due to reduction in root rot damage. Root rot seems to be one evil that the cotton farmer in the Blacklands must learn to live with. The fungus has been found as deep as eight feet in the ground. One field on Temple Station in which there had been heavy loss from root rot has laid fallow since 1928, with no crop planting of any kind. The land has been plowed at regular intervals to simulate a cultivated state but no treatment has been used on it. This year, for the first time since 1928, four rows of cotton were planted on this ground. Root rot has developed with the usual intensity in these four rows of cotton, very good evidence that letting the land lie idle will not get rid of this disease.

A loudspeaker mounted on pick-up a truck keeps a group of vistors informed on what they see as they tour the Station in trucks. That's Dr. J. R. Johnson, soil scientist, at the microphone.

Root rot does not attack cotton alone, although its ravages are more dramatic with cotton than with other plants. Temple Station has what they call a root rot nursery for testing the effect upon various plants. More than 2,000 plants are affected by this fungus. Interestingly enough, hubam clover is not resistant to root rot infection; it simply completes its growth before the disease can cause much damage to it.

Madrid sweet clover and annual yellow blossom sweet clover (Melilotus indica) also prove effective in retarding root rot, although they are probably not so well adapted for this particular purpose in the Blacklands as hubam clover.

The clovers have a value other than the contribution to the control of root rot in cotton. They are great soil rebuilders, fine hay crops, and a cash crop when seed is harvested. A yield of 200 to 500 pounds of seed to the acre for hubam clover gives a financial return comparable to most crops suitable for the area, and the soil is being rebuilt at the same time. At Blackland Experiment Station, they have established that hubam clover used as a winter cover and green manure crop has reduced soil loss by erosion from 10 tons per acre per year to 3.5 tons on Blackland soil with two percent slope.

Acknowledgement: A special thanks to Charlie Tischler (USDA-ARS) for providing these documents.

July 13, 1998
Dennis Hoffman, Project Leader
Steve Dagitz, Webmaster