REPORT OF MR. W. H. FAIRFIELD 



SESSIONAL PAPER No. 16 



AMOUNT OF WINTER WHEAT TO SOW PER ACRE. 



447 



The proper amount of winter wheat to sow per acre is a question that has been 

 the cause of a great deal of discussion among the farmers of southern Alberta for the 

 past few years. Quite a general practice has been to seed lightly, that is, from two to 

 "hree pecks per acre, but some of the most successful growers are beginning to sow 

 larger amounts of seed. In the following table it will be noted that the average results, 

 for the three years that the test has been carried on, would indicate that heavier seed- 

 ings pay. Even in the extraordinarily dry season of 1910, the very light seedings did 

 not give as much increase in yield over the heavier ones as one would be inclined to 

 expect. Judging from the average results given in the table, it certainly appears that 

 it would pay to sow at least one bushel of winter wheat seed per acre. 



The size of the plots used in this test in 1910 was one-tenth of an acre. They were 

 f .11 sown with Kharkov on August 23, on summer-fallowed land. 



Winter Wheat — Rates of Seed per Acre (non-irrigated). 



60 ,. 



75 ,. 



90 „ 



105 .. 



120 -, 



Rate of seed uer acre. 



15 lbs 

 30 n . 

 45 .. . 



Average 



Yield for three 



years. 



Bush. Lbs. 



27 

 33 

 35 

 41 

 43 

 42 

 38 

 38 



47 

 20 

 36 

 17 



1 

 19 



3 

 47 



EXPERIMENTS WITH SPRING WHEAT. 



Although winter wheat yields more, under normal conditions, than does spring 

 wheat, still, owing to a certain element of uncertainty that will always be connected 

 with the wintering of wheat sown in the fall, together with the fact that it is possible 

 to obtain a crop of spring grain the same season that it is sown, it is probable that the 

 importance of spring wheat will never be second to winter wheat in southern Albprta. 



SPRING WHEAT — TEST OF VARIETIES. 



Twelve varieties of spring wheat were grown on summer-fallowed land in 1910 in 

 plots of one-sixtieth of an acre each. The varieties were all sown on March 30, except 

 Red Fife, which was sown on April 1. The seed was sown at the rate of about one 

 bushel and one peck per acre. 



