Proceedings of the Farmers* Club. 307 



and 100 or more acres of fertile land beneath their feet. Some of 

 them are able, as a regular practice, one year with another —not as a 

 lucky hit, but as customary achievements in agriculture, to harvest 

 seventy bushels of shelled corn from each and every acre planted. I 

 have never known a farmer tlms successful w^ith our great American 

 crop who did not practice certain rules in his tillage, who did not 

 have a method and well considered plan in his operations. 



The farmer, or class of farmers, who can generally report seventy 

 shelled bushels per acre, are not lucky — they are sagacious. They 

 know how to grow corn. The average reported by the Agricultural 

 Department, abont twenty-live bushels per acre for the whole country, 

 proves that some of us don't know how to raise corn, or do not enjoy 

 a soil and climate to make snch knowledge pertinent. The practices 

 of these seventy bushel corn growers, properly known and digested, 

 furnish a table of instructions for less thrifty farmers. "We numerate 

 some of them : 



First. — The farmer who regularly cribs large crops never thinks of 

 putting his corn on a field lacking in vegetable mold. If he is oper- 

 ating on a virgin soil, crop may follow crop for a number of years, 

 but usually he plans a rotation, with corn at the head, on sward 

 land. Manure a mow lot in the fall, and turn the sod in April 

 following. In clover, feed moderately in the fall and plow uuder in 

 the spring, when the green foliage of the surface will hide the hoof of 

 the slow stepping horse. The decaying turf does not sustain the corn 

 by furnishing plant food merely. Its chief aid is by arresting moisture 

 and carrying the corn roots through the parching days of midsummer. • 



Second. — Our seventy bushel corn grower does not lean wholly on • 

 a sod. He helps the rotting turf with manure ; generally with good 

 yard compost, Avell rotted and harrowed in, or with the dung of grain 

 fed animals in the hill, or with guano. 



Third. — His variety is twelve rowed or sixteen rowed dent corn, 

 or Ohio dent, selected with care from stalks that hold two or more 

 ears, and from ears over a foot long, well rounded oflT. 



Fourth. — In marking ofi' he is governed somewhat by the strength' 

 of the soil, but most frequently plants in hills four feet apart each way. 



Fifth. — The crow, the wire worm and the grub he disgusts by 

 soaking his seed in copperas water, or dilute sulphuric acid, and roll- 

 ing in plaster. Guano and dissolved bones in the hill are well mixed 

 with the loam. "Wood ashes and plaster are often applied if the crop' 

 is late and low colored. 



