192 Practical Farming 



some sections have, through a good rotation of crops and 

 a wise use of the cheaper forms of commercial fertihzers, 

 got their lands up to the production of forty or more 

 bushels of wheat per acre, the lands of the fertile plains of 

 the Northwest in Minnesota and the Dakotas have fallen 

 in production to about fifteen bushels per acre, simply 

 through the continual growing of wheat on the same land. 

 The Minnesota Experiment Station has shown that a 

 good rotation is as important in the production of spring 

 wheat as in that of the winter wheat, and it is evident that 

 the days of the great bonanza wheat farms must soon be 

 passed and the farmers must go to farming instead of 

 merely sowing wheat. There the crop of Irish potatoes 

 will be a very important one as a preceding crop to wheat, 

 and the rotation should be one long enough to establish a 

 sod for turning for this crop and for com of the earlier 

 flint sorts that can be grown there. 



Seeding to grass with the wheat, the spring wheat 

 farmer should mow the land two seasons, feed the hay 

 and fodder and probably the com, too, and return the 

 manure to the land for the com crop, and the following 

 spring back to wheat again. But the thoughtful student 

 farmer must devise a rotation that suits his particular 

 needs, and in this section the flax crop may be of interest 

 and must be provided for. In fact, no iron-clad rules 

 can be laid down for any section, and what we are advising 

 here in regard to farm rotations are merely suggestive and 

 for farmers to study out for themselves. 



The requirements of the wheat crop for food in the 

 soil will be the same, no matter where the crop is grown 

 or whether it is winter or spring wheat. On the virgin 



