GRAIN CROPS. 313 



More hardy and better suited to land of inferior quality than 

 wheat, rye may be considered the great bread crop of northern 

 countries in which wheat cannot easily be grown. It makes a 

 nutritious, though dark-colored, bread, and its bran is more valu- 

 able than the bran of wheat as a food for domestic animals. 



Ordinarily, the cultivation of rye is much more careless than is 

 that of wheat, probably for the reason that a paying crop can be 

 much more easily grown. But if it received in all respects the 

 same attention, there is no doubt that the result in money would 

 be almost, if not quite, equally good, for while the yield of grain 

 is increased in proportion to the care bestowed, the straw which, 

 under the best circumstances, yields very largely, is, when hand- 

 thrashed, of great value, being worth now, in the Eastern markets, 

 about $35 per ton. 



Rye is much better able than wheat is, to withstand rough 

 treatment in winter. In fact, except upon very wet land, it is 

 rarely winter-killed to any great extent. It grows best on 

 rather light land, and may, with advantage, be sown early in Sep- 

 tember, though, if the autumn is long and warm, it will grow 

 so large as to make it advisable to feed it down before winter 

 sets in. 



A well-established field of rye is the first field on the farm to 

 turn green in the spring, and it is frequently sown to be used exclu- 

 sively for spring pasture, being plowed under as a green crop after 

 the grass is well started. 



As a soiling crop, rye is, by reason of its earliness, very import- 

 ant, and it will be further considered in this connection, in the 

 chapter on soiling. 



The cultivation of oats is so universal and so well understood, 

 that it is hardly necessary to say more here on the subject than 

 that they should be sown at the earliest practicable moment after 

 the frost is out of the ground ; that they do much better when drilled 



