134 SILAGE CROPS. 



The cultivator may be started to advantage as soon as 

 the young plants break through the surface, and the soil 

 kept stirred and weeds destroyed, until cultivation is no 

 longer practicable. 



Varieties of corn for the silo. The best corn for the 

 silo, in any locality, is that variety which will -be reason- 

 ably sure to mature before frost, and which produces a 

 large amount of foliage and ears. The best varieties for 

 the New England States, are the Learning, Sanford, and 

 Flint corn; for the Middle States, Learning, White and 

 Yellow Dent; .in the Central and Western States, the 

 Learning, Sanford, Flint and White Dent will be apt to 

 give the best results, while in the South, the Southern 

 Horse Tooth, Mosby Prolific, and other large dent corns 

 are preferred. 



For Canada, Rennie gives, as the varieties best adapt- 

 ed for the silo; for Northern Ontario, North Dakota and 

 Compton's Early Flint; for Central Ontario, larger and 

 heavier-yielding varieties may be grown, viz., Mammoth 

 Cuban and Wisconsin Earliest White Dent. It is useless 

 to grow a variety for silage which will not be in a firm 

 dough state by the time the first frosts are likely to 

 appear. 



In the early stages of siloing corn in this country, the 

 effort was to obtain an immense yield of fodder per acre, 

 no matter whether the corn ripened or not. Large yields 

 were doubtless, often obtained with these big varieties, 

 although it is uncertain that the actual yields ever came 

 up to the claims made. Bailey's Mammoth Ensilage Corn, 

 "if planted upon good corn land, in good condition, well 

 matured, with proper cultivation," was guaranteed to pro- 

 duce from forty to seventy-five tons of green fodder to 

 the acre, "just right for ensilage." We now know that 

 the immense Southern varieties of corn, when grown to an 

 immature stage, as must necessarily be the case in North- 

 ern States, may contain less than ten per cent, of dry 

 matter, the rest (more than nine-tenths of the total 

 weight) being made up of water. This is certainly a re- 



