Cultural Methods 121 
ducing two under-sized and undesirable beets at harvest 
time. 
Losses from poor thinning. 
The United States Department of Agriculture,! as a 
result of three years’ experiments carried on in Utah, 
showed, the importance of having a good stand. The 
differences in treatment were hardly noticeable by a 
casual observation, but were easily seen when actual 
measurements were made. Although the beets were con- 
siderably larger where the stands were thin, the extra size 
did not nearly make up for the thin stand; the correlation 
between stand and yield was remarkably close. Poor 
stands were almost entirely due to careless thinning, 
spacing, hoeing, and cultivation.. Leaving the beets in 
pairs had a bad effect on the yield. Planting deeper than 
is customary resulted in more damping-off in the young 
beets and consequently in a poorer stand. 
The loss in stand before thinning was over 19 per cent, 
that during thinning over 21 per cent, and the loss be- 
tween thinning and harvest almost 7 per cent, or a total 
of 47.55 per cent loss in stand, so that the average showed 
only one beet to every 16.4 inches. Some farmers who 
were able to maintain a stand averaged a beet to each 
ten to twelve inches in the row. These farmers harvested 
a crop not only larger in proportion to the better stand, 
but the beets with a thicker stand averaged higher in 
sugar. When the stand at harvest was 76.8 per cent 
perfect, the yield was 30.5 tons to the acre; when it was 
1 Shaw, H. B., Dept. of Agr., Bul. No. 238. 1915. 
