FORTY-THIRD ANNUAL CONVENTION 201 



and the largest grain in the spikelet, you would get the largest 

 yield. 



You ought to grow more than 2,100 bushels of oats to 

 the acre. I come to that conclusion by a logical system of rea- 

 soning. I know you won't believe it — I don't believe it myself. 

 But from one grain I got 729 grains of oats. If I had planted 

 a bushel of oats at that rate, I would have gotten 729 bushels 

 in return, and some people sow 3 bushels and they ought there- 

 fore to get three times 729 bushels, or 2,187 bushels, — but they 

 don't. It was a surprise to me that I could get 729 grains from 

 one grain planted. 



Q : How many bushels ? 



A : When you sow oats by the bushel it doesn't mean any- 

 thing to me. I know that there are varieties of wheat and oats 

 with certain definite numbers of grains per bushel, and other 

 varieties that will have one-half, or twice as many, therefore it 

 does not mean anything to say you sow so many bushels. I 

 think we are coming to the time when we are going to sow by 

 the number of live grains to the acre and it will be somewhere 

 around 1,500,000. 



Q : I tried that, I was operating a farm and the man who 

 owned it took a handful of oats and counted how^ many grains 

 of each size. I had a field of sixty acres and I got 80 bushels 

 per acre. 



]\Ir. Ebersol : How many grains to the acre ? 



Q: These oats were wide open, it was a rather low yield. 



Mr. Ebersol : We started, at the Experiment Station a 

 year ago last spring, to determine the rate best suited under 

 the weather conditions of that particular year, but it was a 

 failure because of two of three things. This is true. Where 

 Mr. Allen sowed one bushel of oats, — I do not know how many 

 grains, but probably about 800,000 to the bushel, — and with it 

 18 pounds of alfalfa to the acre, the yield of oats was yi.i 

 bushels. 



