ON GRAIN CROPS. 97 



it must be obvious that it promises to reward the cultivators, 

 as well as most crops on which they have hitherto placed their 

 clwef dependauce. It would seem that it is spring wheat 

 which has brought the culture of it into disrepute. It did so 

 to some extent, we learn, in Maine, where the culture of 

 winter wheat is now so successful. Fall sown, or what is 

 called winter wheat, is, as far as we learn, every where more 

 productive and less liable to blight and other causes of failure 

 than that which is sown in the spring. And from reason and 

 analogy, we should presume it would be so. 



Annual weeds injure but little fall sown grain, and winter 

 rye is certainly more productive than that sown in the spring. 

 The culture of wheat in England and on the Continent of Eu- 

 rope, on soils which, like our own, require the restoration in 

 the form of manure of some of the elements of fertility in 

 general, or which are specially needed by wheat, affords better 

 rules for our study, than the practice of those in our own 

 country who cultivate virgin soils. I see no reason why the 

 following, extracted and abridged from Low's elements of agri- 

 culture, are not nearly as well adapted to New England as 

 they are to Old England. After enumerating and describing 

 the various kinds of wheat cultivated in Great Britain, he says : 

 "Of the species which have been enumerated, greatly the most 

 important in the rural economy of this country is the winter 

 wheat. 



Wheat is of very general cultivation on all classes of soils. 

 But the soils best suited to it are those which are more or less 

 clayey. So peculiarly is wheat suited to the stiffer soils that 

 these are familiarly termed wheat soils. The soils of the light- 

 est class are the least suited to wheat — and are better devoted 

 to other cereals, rye, oats, &.C. As wheat is the most valuable 

 of cereals, so it requires greater care to produce it It is an er- 

 ror to sow with a corn crop any land which is out of order, 

 but this error is greater and more hurtful in the case of wheat, 

 than of the other cereals. Wheat is always sown before win- 

 ter, when the land can be prepared to receive it. The best 

 period for sowing is from about the middle to the end of Sep- 

 tember. The early part of October is well suited to the sow- 

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