SWEET CORN 167 
There seems to be a disposition to plant sweet corn 
too thick. This is a mistake. There should never be to 
exceed three grains to a hill, and when drilled set drill 
to drop about one foot apart. 
Good seed ought to test 95 per cent.; where it tests 
less than this I would advise hand picking the seed, pick- 
ing out the brightest and best grains. It pays to do this, 
and it can be done in bad days of spring when other work 
cannot be done. 
Canning factories pay from five to ten dollars per ton 
for sweet corn jerked from the stalk, and delivered to 
the factory in a green stage fit for canning. Some fac- 
tories have a system of grading or testing by which a 
bushel is taken from each load and shucked and weighed, 
when it must come up to a certain fixed standard, but 
generally it is bought by the ton just as it is jerked in 
the field. The ten-dollar price is paid for the smaller 
eared variety like Country Gentlemen, which do not pro- 
duce a large number of tons per acre. The highest price 
paid for heavy yielding varieties, like Stowell’s Ever- 
green, is eight dollars per ton, and at this price there is 
money in growing it, as it will produce from four to six 
tons per acre, to which add the value of the fodder and 
you have one of the most profitable crops grown on the 
farm. If it does not prove a profitable crop it is because 
it has been planted on poor soil or its cultivation has been 
neglected. It will respond and produce fine paying crops 
if given a chance. The author has known farmers to put 
it on their poorest, worst drained soil, give it practically 
no cultivation and then curse and condemn it as a non- 
money maker. He knew one farmer who planted five 
