530 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



quires. Second: To know the kind of crops to raise. Third: To test the 

 new kinds of seeds and plants, to know whether they are adapted to 

 his soil and conditions. Only by such tests can the farmer intelligently 

 plant or sow any new crop. On our own farm we have done a little ex- 

 perimenting. The results may be of interest to some, not because they 

 were always successful, but because of the lessons they teach. 



Our first experiment was in subsoiling a piece of prairie sod. We got 

 the idea somehow that all that was needed to grow a crop on our virgin 

 soil was to get a mellow seed bed. Our experiment of subsoiling prairie 

 sod failed to produce a crop even though we gave it the best of care. 

 Later we learned the reason why. That lesson was worth more to us 

 in after years than many "I told you so's" would have been. 



In order to find out the relative cost of production between a crop 

 of wheat and a crop of corn careful account was kept of the two crops, 

 only to prove that there was very little difference in the cost of produc- 

 ing an acre of corn and an acre of wheat, the profit being in the yield 

 per acre and the price of the product. Running through a series of years 

 we find that corn has stood up better and yielded more per acre on land 

 that had been in small grain the previous year as against land that had 

 been in corn. 



In growing oats we find that in four years out of five the early oats 

 have produced the best yield; two of the years the yield being fifteen 

 bushels per acre more than the late or side oats produced. 



For the past tw-o years we have been experimenting with a new 

 kind of spring wheat, claimed by the seedsmen to be "pure bred." The 

 first year we sowed two pecks of seed, the second year four bushels. 

 The wheat has produced a very fair berry of good color and shape, but it 

 is not a heavy yielder. We shall try it again, however, before giving 

 it up. 



On the light soils of Ida county we have found that a better stand 

 of clover can be secured where it is given the same covering as the 

 small grain, and the best stand has been secured where early oats or 

 spring wheat has been used as a nurse crop. 



Alfalfa has been tried on our farm only in a very limited degree. A 

 small piece, about three fourths of an acre, was seeded in the spring of 

 1902 at the rate of twenty pounds to the acre. The ground was plowed 

 in the fall and then disked twice in the spring. The seed was sown 

 about April 20th and harrowed in. A good stand was secured. Part of 

 the plat was sowed on fall rye. part with oats, and part to alfalfa, with- 

 out a nurse crop. The oats were mowed for hay August 1st, the rye 

 was harvested July Sth. and the plot without the nurse crop was mowed 

 when the oats were. The whole plot was mowed again in September. 

 The best stand and the best growth was where the oats were sowed as a 

 nurse crop. We sowed one half bushel of oats per acre. During the 

 past summer we mowed three crops of alfalfa hay, but owing to the ex- 

 cessive rainfall we lost the first and last cuttings in curing. This ex- 

 periment, however, has satisfied us that alfalfa will do well in Ida county. 

 (We might mention here that the seed was furnished by W. S. Kelly. 



