286 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



suitable, and produces a crop of seed the next year. In the United States 

 east of the Rocky Mountains and north of latitude 40 degrees, and perhaps 

 even further south, the severe freezing of the winter kills it; hence, the 

 seed is all brought from England or Holland or from the states on the 

 Pacific coast, where the mild winter enables it to survive. There is there- 

 fore, no danger of it becoming a weed and polluting the land like wild 

 mustard. You may be dead sure of the northern winter killing any Dwarf 

 Essex Rape that may be left over if indeed your stock will allow any of 

 it to survive after the first of December. 



Of what use is Dwarf Essex Rape, anyhow? says the new subscriber. 

 Its use is for pasture. It may be sown as early as oats and from time to 

 t-me until August, whenever the soil has sufficient moisture to sprout the 

 peed. We advise sowing it under the following circumstances: First, we 

 advise plowing up and sowing to either rape or to a mixture of oats and 

 rape, or wheat and rape, or all three, any lots around the barn or other 

 buildings that are rich and liable to grow up to weeds or on which there is 

 an insufficient grass stand, for use as a hog pasture. We are dead sure 

 that treated in this way these lots would become revenue producing 

 instead of growing up with unsightly weeds and will give as large a reve- 

 nue where hogs are on hand as if they were cultivated in corn with the 

 greatest care, and with a great deal less labor. In fact, the very cheapest 

 thing, as well as the most profitable, to grow on these lots is Dwarf Essex 

 Rape alone or combined with the grains above mentioned. There is not 

 the slightest doubt about this being a paying proposition. Our new sub- 

 scribers, as well as old, can take this on faith and act accordingly. Corn 

 is scarce this year and high in price, and you may just as well get the 

 value of a crop of corn in advance, beginning to harvest it as soon as the 

 rape is six or eight inches high as pay out money for feed for your hogs 

 until a new corn crop comes. 



A good many farmers for the past two years have picked up an extia 

 five dollars per acre on oats fields by sowing, either with the oats or after 

 the oats have fairly started, from three to five pounds of rape seed per 

 acre. We do not, however, advise this so positively and would prefer sow- 

 ing after the oats, sowing the oats in drills, and covering with a light har- 

 row say after the cats are two or three inches high. 



The objection to sowing with the oats is that if the oats should be a 

 thin stand, the rape will make such a rapid growth as to prove a serious 

 inconvenience at harvest; or if the oats should grow rank and should lie 

 down, the rape will come right along through and harvesting might be a 

 serious trouble, if indeed it is at all practicable. The end to be secured is 

 to have the rape growing not more than stubble high until the oats are 

 harvested. If that end is attained, and the farmer must make up his own 

 mind as to how best to attain it, he is sure of an aftermath, whether he 

 has grass seed with his oats or not, that will be worth from three to five 

 dollars per acre to him provided he can pasture it down with sheep. Quite 

 a number of farmers who do not have a sheep on the place have adopted 

 this method on twenty and forty-acre fields and after they remove their 



