OTHER FARM CROPS 575 



corn crop can be made to produce a good flax crop. Extremely 

 sandy or heavy clay soils are both unsuited to flax. 



5. When flax is cut on the green side, after bloom and before 

 seed development, and cured as hay, it makes a valuable fodder, rich 

 in protein, and containing about the same amount of fiber as timothy 

 hay. Flax straw is richer in protein than either wheat, oat or barley 

 straw. 



6. A yield of fifteen bushels of flax will produce about 315 

 pounds of total oil, yielding from 270 to 280 pounds of crude linseed 

 oil by the pressure process. 



7. Linseed meal, the product obtained in making linseed oil, is 

 a valuable food, rich in protein which is easily and quite thoroughly 

 digested. The manure from linseed meal fed pigs is very concen- 

 trated and rich in nitrogen. If six hundred pounds of linseed meal 

 were fed for every fifteen bushels of flax sold and a good rotation of 

 crops followed, flax raising would then be a means of keeping up the 

 fertility of the soil. When only the oil is sold there is but little fer- 

 tility lost from the farm. 



8. In the raising of flax, the fact that flax will not thrive on the 

 same soil where it has been grown for at least five years previously 

 should be kept in mind, because the flax straw and roots in their de- 

 composition produce products which will destroy a following flax 

 crop. When five or seven years intervene between two flax crops, 

 then the old straw and crop residue is thoroughly decomposed and 

 will not injure a new flax crop. For successful flax raising on soils 

 worn by grain cropping, a liberal use must be made of farm yard ma- 

 nure so as to bring the land up to a high state of fertility. The ma- 

 nure should be applied to corn crops, and not clirect to the flax, then a 

 good yield of flax can be obtained and no injury to the soil will 

 follow. (Minn. E. S. B. 47.) 



Conclusions. The farmer has little incentive to grow flax or 

 fiber until a market is assured, and a market can only be assured 

 when scutch mills have been established to take the product off his 

 hands when grown, and put it into a marketable condition. There 

 should be good scutch mills, not tow mills, in every flax-growing 

 locality. With the establishment of these mills in considerable num- 

 bers, the farmer will be ready to raise flax for fiber as well as seed, 

 the manufacturers will avail themselves of the home supply, and the 

 industry will be placed on a substantial footing. 



Additional References. N '. Dak. E. S. B. 55; Y. B. 1894, 

 1895, 1897, 1903; Mont. E. S. Cir. 6, (1911); U. S. Fiber Inves. 

 R. 4.) 



THE CULTIVATION OP HEMP. 



Hemp (Cannabis sativa) is an annual plant of the mulberry 

 family, cultivated for the production of a soft bast fiber. This fiber, 

 gray if dew-retted, or light yellow if water-retted, is also called hemp. 

 In a strict sense the name "hemp" is correctly applied only to this 

 plant and its fiber. 



Most of the hemp cultivated in this country, amounting to from 

 15,000 to 20,000 acres annually, is grown in the bluegrass region of 



