74 FIELD CROPS 



advisable, on most soils, to plant in this manner. It is 

 also easier to husk hill corn than drill corn, but if it is to be 

 fed out of the bundle the advantage of the larger number of 

 small ears is in favor of drilling. On rich soils, such as clover 

 sod, that are comparatively free from weeds, drilling corn 

 may give very good satisfaction, especially if the land is 

 thoroughly prepared before the corn is planted. On hilly or 

 broken land it is also often advisable to plant in drills to 

 prevent washing of the soil and to avoid the difficulty of short 

 turns in cultivation. On the majority of farms, however, it 

 is generally better to plant corn so that it may be culti- 

 vated both ways. 



82. Thickness of Planting. The general practice in 

 planting corn is to plant in hills 44 inches apart, with three 

 kernels to the hill; or, if planted in drills, to use about the 

 same quantity of seed. It has been shown by numerous 

 tests throughout the corn belt that a stand of three stalks to 

 the hill, as a rule, gives about as large yields as can be 

 expected. Where tests have been made with two, three, 

 and four stalks to the hill, the yields have been slightly 

 larger with four stalks than with three, and much larger with 

 four or three than with only two. From these experiments, 

 it is pretty safe to plan on at least three stalks to the hill, 

 while four stalks are preferable to three. If there is any 

 question about the quality of seed planted, the effort should 

 be to plant four kernels in each hill instead of two and three. 

 From 4 to 7 quarts of seed are required to plant an acre. 



A large number of tests to determine the distance apart 

 to plant corn have shown that slightly larger yields are 

 obtained by putting the rows more closely together than is 

 the common practice. A test made by the Illinois Agri- 

 cultural Experiment Station for two years shows a yield of 

 58.3 bushels to the acre when corn was planted 39J^ inches 



