64 FORAGE CROPS. 



would be torn out or buried. In any event, many of 

 them would be disturbed or uprooted, and to provide 

 for such a contingency it would be necessary to sow 

 enough seed to allow for the thinning that would 

 thus be given to the plants. If sown with the grain 

 drill, all the tubes running, or only a part of them, 

 the cultivation would be the same. But when thus 

 sown there would be less disturbance to the plants, as 

 the seed would be deposited more deeply in the soil, 

 and if the harrowing were given just before the 

 young plants appeared above the surface, the 

 disturbance would be less than when given later. 

 Since these plants are more delicate than corn 

 when young, the harrow cannot be used upon them 

 so freely. 



When planted in rows to provide pasture, or 

 indeed for any purpose, it would be greatly advan- 

 tageous to the crop to cultivate it frequently when 

 the rows are sufficiently distant to admit of horse 

 cultivation. The kind of cultivation would be about 

 the same as for corn, and the benefits therefrom 

 would be similar in kind. ( See Page 22. ) After a 

 season of depasturing such cultivation would be very 

 beneficial, since it would take away any tendency 

 to over-impaction or encrustation of the soil that 

 might arise because of the treading of the hoofs of 

 the animals that had been thus grazed. 



Pasturing. No one of the non-saccharine sor- 

 ghums would seem as yet to have been grown to any 

 considerable extent for pasture, and yet some of them 

 at least may be made to render excellent service in 

 that way. Kaffir corn grown at the Minnesota Uni- 

 versity experiment station proved quite satisfactory 

 in providing summer pasture for sheep, but not quite 



