188 



STATE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



In Europe, where human labor is relatively cheap, it is customary to 

 plant beets in rows approximately sixteen inches apart. Russian ex- 

 periments (Deut. Landw. Presse, 26 — 1899 — page 289) indicate as the 

 minimum of best distances sixteen inches apart of rows and approxi- 

 mately nine inches apart in the row. 



The association of Danish sugar manufacturers carried on experiments, 

 60 trials with results indicating the superiority of even a closer planting, 

 14 inches rather than 18. (Ugerke Landm. 40, pp. 119-121.) 



In this country where the work is to be done largely by horses and 

 where the land is seldom as well fertilized as in Europe, the distance 

 between rows may well be maintained at 20 to 22 inches and certainly 

 not less than 18. The importance of the less labor per ton of beets in the 

 wider row must not be forgotten. 



F. — Exhaustion of the soil T)y heets. 



To test the influence of cropping a soil of light sandy loam with beets 

 for three successive years, a strip 80 feet wide running north and south 

 through a field sixteen rods wide from north to south, was planted to 

 beets for three years in succession. 



East and west of this strip were other plots parallel to it that for the 

 same three years produced crops of clover, oats, millet or alfalfa. These 

 plots were not all of the same width. 



The whole area had been planted to Lathyrus silvestris in 1890 and had 

 borne that crop, without plowing, until 1898. This legume had stored 

 the ground with humus through the decay of its roots. After 1898 the 

 history of the several plots, beginning at the west is shown in the follow- 

 ing table, which also gives the widths of the plots, the length in each 

 case being sixteen rods : 



Three crops were used in 1902 to test the influence of the beets as 

 against the crops on either side of the bcQt strip. The north 72 feet of all 

 the plots just described was sown to oats, the next strip across these 

 plots, just south of the oats was planted to beets and the third strip, 

 reaching to the southern limits of the plots was planted to corn. The 

 width of the beet strip was 79 feet and the corn 114. This test is but 

 one of a series, and the table below, reporting the yield per acre of oats, 

 beets and corn on the several areas is given as a report of progress only. 



The sudden drop in yields on plots 3 and 4 with all three crops is sig- 

 nificant. Both p»lots had had beets for two years, plot three for three 

 years and plot four for two years, followed by one year of oats. 



