208 SOEGHUM: 



This well-known plant is a native of India. Its 

 panicles are used for brooms, and the seeds for poul- 

 try, swine, etc. 



The immense quantities of brush, as the panicle of 

 broom corn is called, which is manufactured into 

 brushes and brooms, jnay easily be imagined, from 

 the large number of those useful articles in daily 

 use throughout the land. 



The culture of broom corn is similar to that of 

 Maize or Indian Corn. Early planting and careful 

 tending. The cultivator should be kept going, close 

 up to the rows, till the advance of the plants renders 

 further work rather difficult. In the Mohawk Val- 

 ley, where it has been successfully cultivated for 

 many years, Gray's broom corn drill is used for 

 drilling it in. The apparatus is- gauged so as to 

 drop four or five seeds at a time, the droppings or hills 

 nine inches apart, the rows two feet nine inches wide, 

 thus bringing it closer than the common corn. The 

 stalk, in consequence, is slender, making a finer 

 brush. This machine marks the rows, and plants 

 and covers at the same time. A man and horse will 

 work it. 



There are two kinds of Broom Corn usually grown 

 the Mohawk and the Evergreen. This latter is con- 

 sidered the most profitable to grow, yielding about 

 eight hundred pounds of brush per acre, while the 

 common or Mohawk kind yields about six hundred. 

 [Helmus Pier, Shaker agent, in 1871, planted three 

 acres of Shaker Dwarf Broom corn on Mohawk Flats, 

 and the produce, after cleaning, weighed 4,500 

 pounds, or at the rate of 1,500 Ibs of clean brush per 

 acre.] 



