152 THE ESSENTIALS OF AGRICULTURE 



In listed corn the ridges are first leveled. When the corn is 

 three or four inches tall, the dirt is thrown from the plants. By 

 reversing the disks at the second cultivation, enough dirt can 

 be worked into the furrows to cover the grass and weeds in the 

 rows. Occasionally a spike-tooth harrow is used to smooth down 

 the ridges, though this has a tendency to cover the corn. After 

 the ridges are leveled, the cultivation should be the same as for 

 surface-planted corn. 



189. Harvesting. While experiments are constantly being 

 made with machines for harvesting corn, no satisfactory solu- 

 tion of the problem has been found. Much of the corn in the 

 principal corn states is harvested late in the fall from the stand- 

 ing stalks and the stalk fields are pastured during the winter 

 months. This is a wasteful practice. 



In parts of the South corn is sometimes harvested by strip- 

 ping or topping. Stripping consists in removing the leaves 

 for forage while they are green and in husking the ears later. 

 In topping, the stalks are cut off just above the ears, for forage, 

 and the ears are gathered by hand when they are fully mature. 



In the Eastern and the Northern states nearly all the corn is 

 either cut and shocked and field-cured, or it is cut and stored in 

 the silo. When corn is to be field-cured, it is allowed to be- 

 come almost mature before it is harvested. The corn is husked 

 by hand and the stover fed whole, or the corn is husked by 

 machinery and the stover shredded and stacked. On small 

 areas and where labor is plentiful the crop is usually cut by 

 hand. In the corn belt, machines which cut and bind the corn 

 into bundles are commonly used. 



In some corn regions it costs as much to harvest the crop as 

 it does to grow it. A 3,ooo,ooo,ooo-bushel corn crop means 

 an average of about 30 bushels for every person in the United 

 States. To husk this corn requires the equivalent of a seven- 

 and-a-half-hour day of labor for every man, woman, and child 

 in the United States. 



