14 BULLETIN 498, IT. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



Ill the experimental plats the weeds have been destroyed by hand 

 hoeing. 



All varieties are carefully rogued to free them from accidental 

 mixtures. They are cut with a binder, shocked, and then thrashed 

 several weeks later with a small separator run by a gasoline engine. 

 The grain from each plat is weighed after thrashing and the bushel 

 weight determined. No straw weights have been recorded. The 

 rows and small plats are thrashed with a small separator designed 

 for that purpose. 



CEREAL EXPERIMENTS. 



SPRING WHEAT. 



From the standpoint of total production in bushels, spring wheat 

 is not as important in the Columbia Basin as winter wheat. Con- 



Fig. 8. — Varietal plats of spring grain at the Moro substation, showing summer-fallow land in the fore- 

 ground. Photographed July, 1914. 



siderable spring wheat is grown, however, on account of the fact that 

 dry weather frequently prevails until so late in the autumn that 

 winter wheat can not be sown with safety. Winter wheat is better 

 adapted to the present summer-fallow system of grain production 

 in the Columbia Basin, because it permits a better distribution of 

 farm labor. Winter wheat also usually gives yields somewhat higher 

 than those of spring wheat. 



Many wheat varieties, like Pacific Bluestem and Little Club, are 

 sown in the Columbia Basin in either the autumn or spring, except 

 on the higher elevations. 



VARIETAL EXPERIMENTS. 



Seventy-seven varieties of spring wheats have been tried at the 

 substation. Some of these, which did not appear to be at all adapted, 

 were discarded after a 2-year trial. New varieties have been added 

 from time to time, and 5-year average yields have been obtained for 



