THE DIVERSIFIED FARM. 



In diversified farming by irrigation lies the salvation of agriculture. 



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Short, practical articles, notes of experience and observation, are invited from the readers of THE IRRI- 

 GATION AGE who are interested in the promotion of the idea of the small diversified farm, providing to the 

 fullest economical extent all of the various articles of food, clothing, etc., required by the family. 



SORGHUM CULTIVATION. 



BY MARY BEST. 



IN Barber County, on the red beds of Central Kansas, 

 the soil is especially adapted to sorghum, and it may 

 interest some readers of THE IRRIGATION AGE to 

 know what has been achieved with this crop. 



The bulk of cane the last five years has been grown 

 for sugar mill here, but owing to loss of bounty from 

 United States and State of Kansas, this promising 

 industry has been totally crushed for the present, and 

 the pity of it is that whilst so much work has been done 

 and money expended, the Government does not keep 

 faith and allow the work to go on and obtain results in 

 sight. Apart from manufacture, there is, however, 

 great value in sorghum as a good and reliable crop, 

 in every year, in this district, extending over a wide 

 area on every side. In 1890 I planted fifty acres in 

 this cane, increasing acreage every year until in 1894 

 I had 1,200 acres; half of this was hauled to the sugar 

 mill, balance cut up and fed to stock of all kinds. Six 

 hundred steers have been fed entirely on this cane and 

 have come through the winter in splendid shape. 



Five years ago if sorghum yielded 10 to 12 per cent, 

 sucrose it was considered rich; now it has to be 15 to 

 20 per cent, to be satisfactory. Experience teaches 

 that the richer in sugar the better the feed, and it 

 cures well in proportion to the pure and select seed 

 used. Cattle do not like unripe cane as well as the 

 mature sweet stalks ; on the other hand it does not do to 

 let it get over-ripe, dry and hard. In planting mixed 

 seed the varieties differ so much that in time of matur- 

 ing they do not ripen together, green ones ferment, 

 over-ripe turn sour. Arnber, Folgers, Colman and 

 Collier are all the varieties needed, and in order named 

 from early to late; the same order applies to quality 

 and ability to stand drouth, though there is not much 

 choice between the three last named. 



This field has been planted the last five years in 

 sorghum, giving an average of twelve tons per acre and 

 twenty bushels of seed. The gleanings on twenty 

 acres have kept over one hundred hogs, most of the 

 winter. Second growth gave pasture for cattle and 

 horses, and not once in the five years have we had a 

 sick animal from eating this cane, although the cows, 

 as cows will, have broken through the fences and 

 gorged themselves on the stuff in all stages, on first 

 and second growths, green and dry hay. 



As green food our stock show no preference for 

 cane over the non-saccharine kaffirs, etc., but in the 

 winter and spring they will hunt through a stack or 

 tear any old roof to pieces to find a stalk of sorghum. 



In dry weather it is a patient plant, waiting day after 

 day; the leaves will dry up and blow away, and yet 

 when a good rain comes in the fall, the plant rises 

 again, sends out new growth and seed heads and yields 

 of its abundance. 



Listing is much safer in a dry country; once culti- 



vating with a sled, twice with a shovel implement, and 

 your crop is in good shape, it repays well all labor put 

 upon it. Seed fed along with stalk makes a splendid 

 ration for cattle and hogs, and work horses do well 

 without other grain. Chickens love sorghum seed 

 and travel far to the barns after it. We plant three 

 pounds per acre to cultivate, drill one bushel for fine 

 hay, cut up and put in shocks or haul to feed lot and 

 stack in good windrows. There are many opinions 

 about sorghum, but those who have tried it longest 

 like it best. 



SUBSOIL PLOWING. 



BY T. L. LYON, B. S. A. 



THE ordinary methods of soil preparation and cul- 

 tivation have during the past two years proved 

 inadequate to bring the soil into a condition 

 capable of retaining through a prolonged dry spell 

 the moisture it received by precipitation. Experi- 

 ments have shown that subsoil plowing, especially if 

 done in the fall, and a thorough cultivation of the land 

 during the growing season, will do much toward con- 

 serving the soil moisture, thus enabling the crops 

 grown thereon to withstand a drought much better 

 than those grown on land treated in the ordinary 

 way. 



The good results of subsoiling on the Nebraska Ex- 

 periment Station farm have been marked. No experi- 

 ment was planned for testing the effect of subsoil plow- 

 ing, but on land that had previously been subsoiled for 

 sugar beets, and this year planted to corn, the effect 

 of subsoiling was so strongly marked as to attract the 

 attention of all who saw it. The subsoil and surface 

 plowed portions of land on which the corn is growing 

 are in the same field on the east side of the farm. It 

 is upland soil, with a gradual slope toward the east. 

 In composition it is a fine loam with considerable 

 organic matter. In the fall of 1891 a portion of this 

 field was subsoil plowed for sugar beets, and this crop 

 was raised the following year. It was not again sub- 

 soiled, but plowed in the same manner as was the 

 remainder of the field. It is a very noteworthy fact 

 that the position of this subsoiled land can now be 

 determined almost to a row by the superiority of the 

 corn growing on it. The stalks on the land not sub- 

 soiled are small, badly dried up, and have not made 

 any grain, while those on the subsoiled land are of 

 good size, having a fresh, green appearance, and will 

 give a fair yield of grain. This, it must be remem- 

 bered, is the effect in 1895 of subsoil plowing in the 

 fall of 1891. 



The accompanying cut is the reproduction of a 

 photograph taken on the edge of the subsoiled land, 

 with only one row of the corn on the surface-plowed 

 land in sight. This subsoiled corn stands in the cen- 

 ter of the corn-field, in which the soil is entirely the 



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