OATS — CLIMATE, SOILS, TILLAGE, USES 289 



TILLAGE PRACTICES 



Tillage practices are,'aa a rule, poorer for oats than for 

 other field crops, regardless of the fact that oats respond 

 profitably to good treatment. 



351. Preparation of the seed-bed. — Oats do better 

 on a seed-bed of medium compactness than on a very 

 loose or very compact one. Deep plowing is not as es- 

 sential as for corn, cotton, or wheat. Much land is sown 

 to oats in the cotton-belt without plowing. In some 

 cases the oats are sown broadcast and covered ^yith some 

 type of turn-plow. Often the land is disked before the 

 seed is sown and once or twice after sowing. Covering 

 the seed on unplowed land with a turn-plow is very ob- 

 jectionable, as much of the seed is covered too deep and 

 the seed-bed is often left in a loose, cloddy condition. 

 Where the soil is naturally compact, as is generally the 

 case in the cotton-belt, plowing the land before planting 

 is advisable. An excellent practice is to plow and thor- 

 oughly pulverize the seed-bed, and sow the seed with a 

 grain drill. Where no grain drill is available, the seed 

 may be sown broadcast after plowing and covered with 

 a disk-harrow. Plowing- and harrowing the seed-bed and 

 afterwards planting by the deep-furrow method described 

 later has been found to give excellent results. 



352. Time of seeding. — All varieties of southern 

 oats, with the exception of Burt or May oats, are best 

 sown in the early fall throughout the greater part of the 

 cotton-belt. The mistake of deferring planting until 

 quite late in the fall is too common in the South. As 

 winter oats are riot so hardy as winter wheat or barley, 

 they require a loriger period between sowing and the 

 coming of cold weather so that the plants may become 



