RYE 



RYE 



561 



successful growing of wheat or barley, and this 

 has tended to crowd the crop off of the more fer- 

 tile soils ; but rye will repay good culture and 

 liberal fertilization as well as any other grain. It is 

 unfortunate that rye and buckwheat have achieved 

 the reputation of being the grains of poverty. . Rye 

 makes its best growth on soils which contain less 

 clay than some which are adapted to wheat, and it 

 is very important that it have good drainage. 

 Snow protection in very severe weather is scarcely 

 less necessary than in wheat-growing. 



The high value of the straw is the only factor 

 which makes it advisable to grow rye on soils which 

 are naturally well adapted to wheat, but this fact 

 has a most important bearing on the case. The 

 writer, living on a farm where both wheat and rye 

 are produced successfully, finds that rye is, on the 

 whole, the more profitable crop to grow, and so It is 

 sown on lands which are rich enough to grow maxi- 

 mum crops of wheat and often to cause it to lodge. 

 Rye here finds its place in a four-crop rotation of 

 corn, heavily manured with stable manure, followed 

 by oats with acid phosphate, this followed by rye 

 with acid phosphate and grass seeded with the rye. 



Fertilizers. — The principles of fertilization which 

 apply to the other small cereals hold with rye as 

 well. Too much nitrogen and moisture result in 

 early lodging, discolored straw and very shrunken 

 grain. Applications of phosphoric acid sometimes 

 give most striking benefits by counteracting this 

 tendency. The writer has seen 250 pounds per acre 

 of dissolved phosphate rook make all the difllerence 

 between a crop which "crinkled" down soon after 

 heading and one that stood up until it was well 

 filled ; and the straw remained fairly bright. 



Seeding. — While the grains of rye^ are smaller 

 than those of wheat, the amount of seed used per 

 acre is about the same. In the rye districts of 

 eastern New York it is customary to sow seven to 

 eight pecks of seed per acre, placing the seed one to 

 two and ond-half inches deep, depending on the soil. 

 On the poorer soils, and with early seeding, some 

 persons recommend less seed. It can be sown safely 

 earlier than wheat, for it rarely shows any tendency 

 to "shoot" the culms in the fall ; it is well known 

 that when this occurs the plant will not survive 

 the winter. In the latitude of Albany, New York, 

 it is sometimes sown as early as the last week in 

 August, while, on the other hand, sowing is some- 

 times deferred so late that it barely germinates 

 before freezing weather. When rye is sown early it 

 sometimes gives a large amount of fall pasturage 

 and an excellent crop of grain the following sum- 

 mer. Early sowing is very desirable on poor soils, 

 in order that the crop may get well established 

 before winter sets in. 



Place in the rotation. — When rye is grown,_ it 

 generally fills the place in the rotation which 

 would otherwise be taken by wheat. There is 

 certainly no crop better adapted for seeding down 

 with grass. When both are grown, there is a 

 popular idea that a good "catch" of clover is more 

 easily secured with rye than with wheat. 



Varieties. — Unlike the other cereals, rye has 

 developed very few varieties, possibly because it 



B36 



cross-fertilizes freely. Yet corn, which cross-fer- 

 tilizes with perfect freedom and is indeed almost 

 self-sterile, has developed, nevertheless, a very large 

 number of varieties and types. More probably, 

 this lack of varieties in rye arises from the fact 

 that it has less innate tendency toward variation, 

 i. e., it is not a plastic form. 



There is a spring and a winter form of rye, the 

 latter being raised almost entirely in America. 

 Now York state growers talk of "White" rye and 

 "Common" rye, and a "Mammoth White Winter" 

 has figured in seedsmen's catalogues, but the dis- 

 tinction is not well marked. The grain has not 

 enough commercial importance to attract much 

 attention in the way of selection and improvement 

 by plant-breeders. A number of wheat X rye hybrids 

 have been made, but they seem to have had no 

 especial value. 



Harvesting and handling. 



Owing to the fact that the culms of rye are so 

 long and slender, a heavy crop is nearly .always 

 more or less lodged and tangled, and its harvesting 

 is attended with special difiiculties. It should be 

 cut and bound as is wheat. When it is sown on 

 fertile soil and grows thick, and stout and seven 

 feet tall, it will severely tax even if it does not go 

 entirely beyond the , capacity of the ordinary grain 

 binder. The binder is not especially constructed 

 for that kind of work, and the elevators will clog 

 and the bundles be tied together. Still, if the 

 machine has a rather long table and the straw is 

 dry, it will usually be possible to handle it by 

 using skill and patience and cutting on only two or 

 three sides of the field. This condition obtains only 

 when rye is sown on soils good enough to grow 

 heavy crops of wheat. Such rye is still often cut 

 with a self-rake reaper and bound and shocked by 

 hand. Four active men, accustomed to the work, 

 will bind rye by hand as rapidly as a reaper will 

 cut it. This makes expensive harvesting, but it is 

 sometimes the only way. 



Rye grain must be thoroughly dry if it is to be 

 stored in large bulk, as it seems to become musty 

 more readily than other grains. If straw is to sell 

 well, it must be threshed without breaking or 

 tangling and then rebound into bundles before 

 baling. This was done by flailing long after that 

 implement had disappeared for other uses. It is 

 now handled by a special type of threshing ma- 

 chine known as a "beater." This has a cylinder 

 about six feet in length run at a very high speed, 

 and armed with only slight corrugations instead of 

 the usual teeth. The bundles are unbound and fed 

 , through this, lying parallel to the axis of the cyl- 

 inder instead of endwise as is the usual way. In 

 the old style of machines the straw is discharged 

 on a table in shape so that one or two men can 

 rebind it with bands of straw caught up from the 

 bundle. In more modern machines, the binding is 

 done with twine by a modified form of the ordinary 

 binder. The straw is baled in the old type of open- 

 topped box-press, being packed in bundle by bun- 

 dle and tramped down. This is peculiarly hard, 

 exhausting work, but it seems to be the only 



