20 PRACTICAL CORN CULTURE 
when it was too wet. The results have always been very 
unsatisfactory, since a dry August will make the corn fire 
much more quickly than it would had the ground been broken 
at the right time. In plowing stalk ground that has first 
been disced, it is well not to allow too much time to inter- 
vene between the two operations. It is a good plan to harrow 
each morning what has been plowed the previous day. Time 
is gained rather than lost by this practice since the plowed 
ground must be harrowed and disced several times before a 
satisfactory seed bed can be made. An hour’s work on freshly 
plowed ground will do more toward making this seed bed 
than can be accomplished in two hours’ time after the wind 
has been allowed to dry out the surface. 
Another good reason for keeping plowed ground harrowed 
is to conserve the moisture. One man and four horses with 
a 120-tooth harrow will get over from twenty-five to thirty-five 
acres in one day. This will prevent the escape of more mois- 
ture and consequently will grow more bushels of corn than 
if an additional five acres had been plowed and the moisture 
allowed to escape from the thirty acres. 
The argument is often advanced that spring plowed ground 
should not be worked down until the time to plant the corn 
since beating rains would make the soil too compact. This 
idea is wrong. If hard rains do come and pack the soil, an 
almost ideal seed bed can be secured by single or double 
discing. If the looked for rains do not come, the farmer who 
has worked his ground as he went along may have a seed bed 
when it would be impossible, even with double the work, to 
make one where the ground had been allowed to lie until 
planting time. 
Every effort should be made to get the fields all plowed 
and harrowed down before the weeds have an opportunity 
to grow up in the stalk fields) A growth of weeds before 
