608 FIELD AND GARDEN PRODUCTS 



objection to this plan is that it leaves the land perfectly bare to be 

 parched by the hot sun and baked so hard as to be difficult to plow. 

 It would appear that this difficulty might be removed by sowing a 

 crop of winter oats or other forage crop after burning over the 

 ground. A better plan, provided the field is to remain fallow, is to 

 wait until the grass is killed by frost, then burn over the ground. In 

 this way some seed will be destroyed. Left exposed, some other will 

 be destroyed by ice, and the remainder,' feeling the warmth much 

 earlier, will germinate in time to be destroyed by plowing. But this 

 will make the planting comparatively late, and the planter will lose 

 the benefit of the early market for the crop. 



Winter Flooding. Attempts have been made to destroy the 

 grass by flooding the lands during the winter, but the result has been 

 unsatisfactory. It appears that the grass seeds will not rot without 

 germinating, and they will not germinate in cold water. 



Early Planting and Mowing. Planters frequently adopt the 

 plan of sowing early and, when the rice and grass have both got a 

 good start, mowing them off and trusting to the rapid growth of the 

 rice to smother out its slower growing rivals. This it generally does, 

 but its race for life absorbs all its energies and gives it no chance to 

 sucker, thus materially reducing the yield. 



Fall Plowing. Shallow plowing and harrowing or thorough 

 disking immediately after harvest, provided the weather is warm 

 enough for the rapid germination of seeds (not later than Septem- 

 ber) , is quite effective against injurious grasses and red rice. Deep 

 plowing simply buries the seed and preserves it for future growth. 

 The shallower the plowing the better, and if there is not sufficient 

 moisture slight irrigation should be resorted to after the plowing. It 

 will be seen that there are objections to every method described, and 

 some of them are complete failures. Next to hand weeding, the 

 methods which involve the burning over of the ground are doubtless 

 the most effective in eradicating the grass, but summer fallowing with 

 shallow plowing and the employment of some densely growing crop 

 like cowpeas or velvet beans will, all things considered, be the most 

 advantageous for the soil and most efficacious for the eradication of 

 the injurious grasses. 



Red Rice. Red rice, a wild variety having red grains, causes the 

 rice growers much annoyance and loss. The presence of a few red 

 grains in milled rice lowers its grade and reduces its price. If red rice 

 once gets a foothold in a field it increases rapidly from year to year 

 until finally the product becomes unsalable. The red rice and the 

 common white rice are two separate and distinct strains. The seed of 

 one will not produce the other. Being stronger, hardier, and more 

 persistent than the cultivated white rice, the former becomes a danger- 

 ous weed in the rice field. Its first start comes from the sowing of seed 

 containing red grains. The fields are reseeded from year to year 

 mainly in this way : After the crop is harvested the stalks which have 

 been cut off frequently send out suckers from the lower joints which 

 mature seed. As these seeds possess remarkable resistance to pre- 

 mature germination, spring finds the ground well sown with red rice. 



