CORN LETTERS FROM THIRTY FARMERS 153 



This loosens and mellows the soil besides letting in warmth. It will 

 also start the first crop of weeds to growing. About the tenth of 

 May I go over the ground again with the disc and kill all these 

 sprouted weeds. I now give the field one or two good harrowings and 

 plant. The corn is always harrowed again before it is up. In pre- 

 paring stalk ground I prefer to plow it in the fall, but one seldom 

 gets this chance. By all means leave the stalks to be plowed under. 

 Why? Because anything that will decay in the soil makes humus and 

 humus is what we need to keep our soil loose and mellow. My method 

 of getting rid of the stalks is to go over the ground both ways 

 with a disc. This cuts the stalks up and also makes a mulch of loose 

 soil to have on the underside of your furrow slice. Disc your soil 

 again after the plow before the clods have time to dry and you will 

 have no clods, since the furrow slice has been completely pulvemed. 

 For spring plowing I think four inches is deep enough, but for fall 

 plowing seven or eight inches is better. 



Our soil is level, black loam and comparatively heavy. My aim 

 is to have a carload of cattle to sell every year and thus with their 

 help I improve instead of impoverishing the soil. 



Yours truly, CHARLES HOLZ. 



Rushville, Illinois, April 10th, 1913. 

 W. T. Ainsworth & Sons, Mason City, Illinois. 



Gentlemen: Replying to your request for our methods of corn 

 growing, I must suggest that what I can say will be of little interest 

 and small value. I devote my best thought to apple growing. 



Where corn follows corn, we cut the stalks up fine with a sharp 

 disc and thoroughly harrow down the land, then plow about six to 

 eight inches deep. We then harrow the land, furrow off three and 

 one-half feet wide with large shovel plows, and drill eighteen to 

 twenty inches apart in row. 



Our lands are both black, loam bottom and loose formation upland. 

 I never plant two successive crops of corn on upland, and very rarely 

 on bottom-land. I use similar methods in preparing the ground on all 

 these soils. 



We never plow stalk land in fall as the crop is not removed in time. 



I believe stalks should never be burned as they do not interfere 

 with cultivation, when properly cut up, and on upland they help to 

 prevent the land from washing and also return some fertility to the 



