AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 7l 



to tlie production. As a general rule, the earliest planted is not the best, 

 and I am not quite satisfied about soaking corn before planting. 



Mr. Fuller, horticulturist, Brooklyn. — I find that all well prepared soil 

 is much earlier than soil that lies compact and hard. Manuring warms it 

 and brings forward the crop. 



A. Bergen, a Long Island farmer. — Prepare your land well, and you can 

 depend upon a corn crop in all seasons. Farmers fail because they do not 

 plow, dress and prepare the soil well. 



John G. Bergen. — I can grow sixty bushels per acre, but I can grow other 

 crops to greater profit, because I grow mark^jt garden vegetables. 



T. W. Field. — I believe that upon an average the Indian corn crop is 

 the most profitable of any — even more so than carrots. Every one cannot 

 grow carrots, but every one can grow corn. After all, it is adaptation of 

 crops to location, I believe that everywhere Indian corn growing may be 

 made profitable. Here the stalks are very valuable, while at the west 

 nearly worthless. 



A. Bergen. — I find corn-stalks valuable for feeding horses ; they cured 

 mine of heaves. 



Mr. Ambler of Harlem. — I came here to learn how to plant corn, as I 

 liave a little farm in Connecticut, where we think the fodder of an acre of 

 corn worth as much as an acre of grass. By deep plowing I reclaimed a 

 very badly cultivated piece of land that had been for many years planted 

 in buckwheat or rye, without manure, and with but little rest and but little 

 product. I planted a portion to corn, after plowing seven inches deep, 

 which was considered very deep plowing in that locality. I applied no 

 manure, and at first the corn looked miserable, until about the first of 

 July, when it began to grow, and it proved to be the best crop in the town 

 of Bethel. Next year I sowed oats and got a good crop, and sowed clover 

 and had an excellent crop of clover — the whole attributable to deep plow- 

 ing — that is, deeper than it had ever been plowed before. I am satisfied 

 that we can make corn growing in Connecticut more profitable than in Illi- 

 nois, simply by increasing the depth of the soil with the plow. 



Mr. White, of Staten Island. — I plowed an acre of land never before- 

 cultivated to corn, and used very little manure, but plowed deeper than it- 

 had been before, and got the best crop in the neighborhood. 



T. W. Field. — Some of the Long Island farmers say that they 

 have grown 128 to 130 bushels of corn per acre, planted 4 feet 8 inches 

 apart, 



Mr. Fuller. — I have traveled Illinois pretty well, and I have never seen 

 100 bushels per acre. I have been told that a corn crop near St. Louis 

 was worth only fifteen cents a bushel, and fifty bushels per acre there ia 

 a full yield. 



T. W. Field. — The largest corn crops have generally been grown in dis- 

 tricts of poor soil. In Central New York, 70 bushels is a full crop. In 

 donnecticut, on the Thames river, I saw a crop of 14 acres that measured 



