RYE 345 



winter sets in. Rye is sometimes sown as late as Decem- 

 ber 1st but these very late sowings usually produce small 

 yields. The usual rates of seeding rye are 4 to 6 pecks to 

 an acre for grain and 6 to 8 pecks for pasture. When sown 

 in 18-inch drills, one bushel to the acre is sufficient. 



427. Harvesting and handling. Ordinarily the meth- 

 ods of harvesting rye are the same as for wheat and 

 oats. When rye is sown on very fertile soils the culms 

 often grow to such length as to cause the crop to lodge 

 and tangle. Under such conditions harvesting is attended 

 with special difficulties. The binder is not especially 

 constructed to harvest grain that is seven feet tall and 

 unless the machine has a very long table and the straw 

 is especially dry, the elevators will clog and the tying will . 

 be very unsatisfactory. Where the grain is badly lodged, 

 it is often necessary to cut on only one or two sides of the 

 field. The self-rake reaper is sometimes used to cut very 

 heavy rye, the bundles being bound and shocked by hand. 

 Four or five men are necessary to bind rye by hand as fast 

 as a reaper will cut it. This makes this method of har- 

 vesting expensive, but special conditions may make it nec- 

 essary. The precautions to be taken in shocking, thresh- 

 ing, and storing rye are the same as for wheat and oats. 



When properly bundled, good rye straw has a high value 

 on the market. ' ' If straw is to sell well, it must be threshed 

 without breaking or tangling and then rebound into bun- 

 dles before baling. This was done by flailing long after 

 that implement had disappeared for other uses. It is now 

 handled by a special type of threshing machine known as 

 a 'beater.' This has a cylinder about six feet in length 

 run at a very high speed, and armed with only slight 

 corrugations instead of the usual teeth. The bundles are 

 unbound and fed through this, lying parallel to the axis 



