144 



Y. EXPERIMENTS IN IMPROVEMENT BY METHODS OF CULTIVATION. 



It is a rule in agricultural science tliat to obtain the best results the 

 individual plants must be given the most favorable conditions possible 

 for full development. 



In the effort to improve the sorghum plant methods of cultivation 

 will play an important part. Very little attention has been paid here- 

 tofore to this subject, the cheapest and easiest methods being followed; 

 and the sorghum crop has had about the same cultivation as is given 

 to the corn crop. In the work at this station no very extensive experi- 

 ments could be made on different methods of cultivation, but a number 

 of practical points were evolved, which may be stated as our views on 

 the best methods to be followed, without going into details as to the 

 evidence upon which the conclusions were based. 



It is desirable in growing cane for sugar manufacture, that as nearly 

 as possible all of the plants in one field should ripen at one time. If 

 in one row there are some canes fully ripe and other canes immature, it 

 will not be easy to harvest the canes at the time when each contains its 

 maximum of sugar. It is a point of advantage to have all come up at 

 the same time. This can best be accomplished by planting the cane on 

 freshly plowed land the same day the land is plowed, and by being 

 careful to cover the cane seed at a uniform depth with earth. This in- 

 sures as uniform a start as possible for the canes, and while it may 

 seem a trifling matter it often materially affects the results. 



After the young plants have come up a serious problem arises, and 

 that is, how to cultivate the plants, to pulverize and loosen the soil, 

 and to destroy the weeds without injuring the roots on which the de- 

 velopment of the plants depends. 



Great injury is done to the roots of canes when the cultivator works 

 deep and close to the plants after they have attained considerable size. 

 This injury is perhaps greater than most persons suppose. It appears 

 to be proved by a very simple experiment. If the roots of a hill of 

 cane are cut all around the hill with a spade at a distance of 6 inches 

 from the canes to a depth of G inches from the surface, when the plants 

 are 4 inches high, and if this process is repeated once a week until the 

 canes are 4 feet high, the canes thus treated will be found, to ripen later 

 and to be inferior in all respects. In wet seasons the injury is not so 

 great as in d^, but injuries are caused to growing plants by the culti- 

 vator as with the spade. 



To avoid destroying and mutilating the roots of the growing canes, 

 it seems better to give deep and close cultivation while the plants and 

 their roots are small, and when the first cultivation is given to use long 

 and narrow shovels, which work near the canes, and with* a slow and 

 steady team give close and deep and thorough cultivation before the 

 rootlets are expanded sufficiently to be injured by such cultivation. 



In the succeeding cultivations u shallow shovels, " that is, shovels 

 having such form that they do their work at or near the surface of the 



