CORN LETTERS FROM THIRTY FARMERS 153 
This loosens and mellows the soil besides letting in warmth. It will 
also start the first crop of weeds to growing. About the tenth of 
May I go over the ground again with the dise and kill all these 
sprouted weeds. I now give the field one or two good harrowings and 
plant. The corn is always harrowed again before it is up. In pre- 
paring stalk ground I prefer to plow it in the fall, but one seldom 
gets this chance. By all means leave the stalks to be plowed under. 
Why? Because anything that will decay in the soil makes humus and 
humus is what we need to keep our soil loose and mellow. My method 
of getting rid of the stalks is to go over the ground both ways 
with a disc. This cuts the stalks up and also makes a mulch of loose 
soil to have on the underside of your furrow slice. Dise your soil 
again after the plow before the clods have time to dry and you will 
have no clods, since the furrow slice has been completely pulverized. 
For spring plowing I think four inches is deep enough, but for fall 
plowing seven or eight inches is better. 
Our soil is level, black loam and comparatively heavy. My aim 
is to have a carload of cattle to sell every year and thus with their 
help I improve instead of impoverishing the soil. 
Yours truly, CHARLES HOLZ. 
Rushville, Illinois, April 10th, 1913. 
W. T. Ainsworth & Sons, Mason City, Illinois. 
Gentlemen:—Replying to your request for our methods of corn 
growing, I must suggest that what I can say will be of little interest 
and small value. I devote my best thought to apple growing. 
Where corn follows corn, we cut the stalks up fine with a sharp 
dise and thoroughly harrow down the land, then plow about six to 
eight inches deep. We then harrow the land, furrow off three and 
one-half feet wide with large shovel plows, and drill eighteen to 
twenty inches apart in row. 
Our lands are both black, loam bottom and loose formation upland. 
I never plant two successive crops of corn on upland, and very rarely 
on bottom-land. I use similar methods in preparing the ground on all 
these soils. 
We never plow stalk land in fall as the crop is not removed in time. 
I believe stalks should never be burned as they do not interfere 
with cultivation, when properly cut up, and on upland they help to 
prevent the land from washing and also return some fertility to the 
