CORN LETTERS FROM THIRTY FARMERS 151 
enough to cultivate. I always work ground just before planting, so 
that it will be clean and let the corn get ahead of the weeds. I gen- 
erally plant corn twenty inches apart in the row, and the rows are 
forty-two inches apart. I drill corn because we plow in lands that con- 
tain from eight to ten rows. I harrow corn before it comes up: in 
case the planting was done in rough and cloddy ground, I harrow corn 
after it is up, unless it is big enough to cultivate before I can use 
the harrow. I want corn to be about three or three and one-half inches 
high before I cultivate the first time, as I want to plow close and deep 
and cover all little weeds and put just a little dirt around the corn 
I plow about three inches deep and set fenders as high as possible, to 
allow some of the dirt to drop around the corn plants. 
When laying corn by I plow deep enough to turn over and clean 
the row, but I stay away from the corn and take the middle all out. 
I use shovel and dise plows. I always use shovels for first plowing. 
The dise leaves too much ground undisturbed and the weeds grow 
more quickly in the row than where plowed with shovels. I consider 
shovels and discs best for this soil, since surface cultivation leaves the 
ground too hard after a heavy rain. I try to cultivate my corn three 
or four times and do if I am not delayed by rain or other work. In 
laying corn by I have no set height or time, but plow when the ground 
is in good mellow condition. I often plow my corn the last time 
when it is three and four feet high. If I am delayed by some cause 
or other I have laid corn by, with good results, when it was tasseling 
out. CHAS. J. KERNER. 
St. Croix, Indiana, April 28th, 1913. 
Messrs. W. T. Ainsworth & Sons, Mason City, Illinois. 
Gentlemen:—My farm is located in Southern Indiana in the north- 
eastern part of Perry County. Our land is a light clay loam soil and 
inclined to be rolling while some is level; too level. I never follow 
corn with corn, nor can anyone here and make farming pay. 
I bought my farm about twenty-five years ago. At the time I bought 
it, it was considered a run-down farm and would not grow ten bushels 
of corn per acre. Today I have no trouble in growing fifty to sixty 
bushels per acre. I have brought this farm to its present state of 
fertility by a rotation consisting of corn one year followed by wheat, 
oats or cowpeas, then with clover and pasture. 
In this locality we plow early in the spring if the weather will 
