THE WHEAT CULTUEIST. 261 



a mystery not that farmers do not grow large crops of 

 this kind of grain but that they are able to mature 

 any at all. 



Now, then, for the best time to sow winter wheat. 

 In the first place, looking forward to the long and 

 dreary winter, we find that the strongest wheat plants, 

 those that are most firmly rooted and that have a sys- 

 tem of luxuriant leaves, sufficient to cover the surface 

 of .the ground, will endure the rigors of our northern 

 winters with less injury. In consideration of this fact, 

 reason would seem to dictate putting in the seed very 

 early even in the month of August. But there are 

 destructive enemies ahead. If the seed be put in very 

 early, so that the plants attain a large size in a few 

 weeks, countless hordes of insects, in the form of the 

 wheat fiy, will nearly destroy the crop. As this enemy 

 flourishes between the two periods early seed time and 

 late seed time we must evade, if possible, its ravages. 

 Therefore, we must choose the late seed time ; and in 

 order to be prepared to resist the adverse influences of 

 winter, we must plough and harrow and manure the 

 soil, cultivate, pulverize, drain, and fertilize the seed- 

 bed, and by repeated and most thorough mechanical 

 tearing and trituration, get the ground into such a fa- 

 vorable condition for vegetation, that the young plants 

 will spring from seed deposited in the soil, after the 

 dreaded foes have run their course, and still have suffi- 

 cient time to become rooted and topped before the 

 winter sets in. Here, then, we are able to fix upon a 

 point of time for every farmer in every latitude, with 

 the assurance that, if a crop cannot be secured by seed- 

 ing, at that period, we must meet a failure. 



When wheat is sowed so late in the growing season. 



