CORisr GROWERS ASSOCIATION 



CULTIVATION OF CORN. 



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The cultivation of the corn crop must depend upon the condition of 

 seasons, soil and the amount of weeds in the field. The cultivation of the 

 crop is for the purpose of destroying weeds, conserving soil moisture, and 

 aerating the soil. The weediness of the field will depend upon the work 

 done on the seed bed. If the seed bed has been properly handled, pre- 

 paratory to planting, most of the weeds will have been destroyed, so that 

 the principal object of cultivation is that of conserving the soil moisture. 



AMOUNT OF MOISTURE PER GROWTH OF CORN CROP. 



At the Wisconsin Experiment Station, it has been found that it re- 

 quires about 310 pounds of water to produce a single pound of dry 

 matter. By figuring up the amount of dry matter in an 80 acre field of 

 corn, and multiplying by 310, the pounds of water required to produce 

 the crop will be secured. The result is astonishing. 



It does not seem possible that such an enormous quantity of moisture 

 can be secured by the corn plants during the growing season, and more 

 important than all, this moisture in most part is used during June, July 

 and August, the months of least rainfall in the year, so it can easily be 

 seen that the conservation of the moisture in the soil is a most important 

 problem, and one which must be tried by the corn grower. 



CONSERVATION OF SOIL MOISTURE. 



The Illinois Station conducted exhaustive tests of the comparative 

 amount of moisture consumed by the different methods of cultivation. 

 Two things we found to be true, first, that deep cultivation conserves soil 

 moisture, and second, that frequent cultivation conserves the moisture 

 most effectively, of all kinds of plans for cultivation. It was found that 

 in deep cultivations, despite the excess of moisture, the yield was very 

 low, compared to shallow culture. To find the cause of this an extensive 

 series of experiments with the pruning, or cutting off the root, of corn 

 plant was conducted. 



EFFECT OF ROOT PRUNING. 



In this root pruning experiment, a field of corn was selected and one 

 row was root pruned two inches deep. This root pruning was done with 

 a broad, sharp spade. The spade was set down about six inches from the 

 stalk of corn in the hill on every side of the hill. The spade was pushed 

 down into the soil and a guard allowed it to penetrate just to the depth 

 planned for in the experiment. The whole field was cultivated with a 



