CORN 127 



the moisture in the ground, thus making the corn come 

 up more completely and quickly and causing the young 

 plants to grow more rapidly. This cultivation with the 

 weeder can be kept up until the corn plants are several 

 inches or even a foot high. One man with a horse or 

 mule can thus cultivate 10 to 12 acres in a day. 



In the cotton belt, upland corn is usually thinned to one 

 plant in a hill. Corn should be cultivated as soon after 

 every rain as the soil is dry enough. A cheap implement 

 much used in the South for cultivating corn is the " heel 

 scrape." Various styles of one-horse and two-horse culti- 

 vators are used. Cultivation usually ceases before all the 

 silks appear. In cultivating corn avoid ridging the land 

 very much, because this takes earth from the middle of the 

 row and because ridging increases the amount of surface 

 that evaporates moisture. 



Fertilizers. Corn grows best on rich, moist land, and it 

 pays better to enrich the land by growing cowpeas or other 

 soil-improving plants in previous years than to use large 

 amounts of commercial fertilizers. Manure, applied early, 

 is the best fertilizing material for corn. When this cannot 

 be had, moderate amounts of commercial fertilizers rich in 

 nitrogen may be used on land needing fertilizer. A mix- 

 ture of 200 pounds of cotton-seed meal and 100 pounds of 

 acid phosphate per acre is often satisfactory. 



Stripping the leaves. Many farmers in the South strip 

 off the corn leaves to obtain " fodder " with which to 

 feed their teams. When the farmer strips the green leaves 

 from the corn plant he stops the accumulation of carbon, 

 the material of which the corn grain chiefly consists. 



