CHAPTER XVI 
THE CULTURE OF CORN 
ORN can only reach its highest stage of develop- 
ment when it is properly cultivated. The corn 
root is the mouth of the corn plant, as its food 
is collected from the soil and fed to it through its roots, 
hence the necessity of protecting the corn roots and put- 
ting about them the environments essential to their best 
development and growth. 
The corn roots must be protected so they can perform 
their functions of collecting plant food undisturbed. 
Any method of cultivation that destroys any portion of 
the corn roots is disastrous to the corn plant, and reduces 
the yield in proportion to the amount of roots destroyed. 
Eminent professors of corn culture have by experi- 
ments proven that corn roots pruned to the depth of 
three inches, six inches from the hill, cut the yield six 
bushels to the acre, and four inches deep, eighteen bush- 
els to the acre. 
Cultivating deep and tearing off the corn roots after 
the second cultivation will decrease the yield from three 
to twenty bushels to the acre; so any method of corn 
cultivation that destroys the roots must be abandoned if 
we would secure the highest and best yield. 
As to the two first cultivations, corn may be cultivated 
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