TILLAGE AND ROTATION EXPERIMENTS AT NEPHL, UTAH. 5 



TREATMENT OF THE CROP. 



Methods employed. — The Turkey winter wheat (C. I. No. 2998), a 

 hard, red variety, was used in all the experiments except where 

 otherwise stated. Except in the tests dealing directly with seeding 

 problems, the plats of each test were sown on the same date, at a 

 uniform depth, and at a uniform rate (3 pecks per acre). After 

 seeding, no cultivation was given until the following spring. Then, 

 if deemed advisable, the plats were harrowed with a spike-tooth 

 harrow to break the crust, which usually had formed as a result of 

 conditions in winter and early spring. The breaking of the crust was 

 intended to check evaporation and to stimulate the plants. One har- 

 rowing was usually all the cultivation the crops received. Occasion- 

 ally, however, weeding was necessary, and when hoes were used such 

 weeding might be considered as cultivation. 



The crops were harvested with a binder, each plat being cut sepa- 

 rately, usually when the grain was in the "hard-dough" stage. The 

 bundles were always shocked, and then the plat was raked in order to 

 prevent loss from fallen heads. The shocks generally stood in the 

 field from three to four weeks before thrashing commenced. 



The grain of each plat was thrashed separately. Before thrashing, 

 the entire crop was weighed. The weight of the grain after thrashing 

 was subtracted from the total weight of the crop, thus giving the 

 weight of straw per plat. The weight of straw or grain, multiplied 

 by 5 or 10, according to the size of the plat, gave the yield per acre. 

 The acre yield of grain in pounds was then divided by the standard 

 weight per bushel to get the yield per acre in bushels. 



Sequence of operations. — The experiments here reported will be dis- 

 cussed in the following order, which is based upon their relation to 

 the sequence of operations necessary to dry-land crop production: 

 Stubble treatment after harvest, plowing, cultivation of fallow, 

 seeding the crop, cultivation of the crop, harvesting the crop, fre- 

 quency of cropping, and diversity of the crops in the rotation. 



STUBBLE TREATMENT AFTER HARVEST. 



In ordinary practice in this region no cultivation precedes the 

 plowing of the plats; however, to determine the value of different 

 methods of treating the stubble land previous to the time of plowing, 

 two tests were inaugurated in the fall of 1911. These tests have been 

 (1) the burning of the stubble, as compared with plowing it under; 

 and (2) the disking of the stubble immediately after harvest, as com- 

 pared with no treatment of the stubble previous to plowing. Neither 

 of these tests has been in progress long enough to give any dependable 

 information. 



