140 



THE WHEAT CULTUEIST. 



quirement of the soil, after everything else to appear- 

 ance has been done which is really essential. 



Farmers often congratulate themselves, when they 

 deposit the seed in a mellow seed-bed, that if any of 

 their neighbors are so fortunate as to have a bountiful 

 crop of wheat, they, most assuredly, will not fail to 

 reap an abundant harvest. But they do fail, simply 

 because the soil has not been fattened. A field often 

 looks very mellow, at seedtime, the young plants attain 

 a fair size before winter, and the growth of straw is 

 luxuriant and heavy ; but at harvest, the heads of grain 

 are exceedingly short and the kernels small, because the 

 ground was not properly fattened with those elements 

 of fertility which are required to swell out the kernels like 

 grain just removed from the steep- vat. The experience 

 of every practical farmer will accord with these sugges- 

 tions. We often see wheat, when it is cradled, as high 

 as the laborers' heads ; and the sheaves are very large, 

 and numerous over the entire field. But the ears yield 

 very little grain, because the soil has not been fattened. 



Culture of Wheat ojst Pkaieie Soils. 



Most farmers think that the prairie soil in which the 

 plant food has been accumulating for untold ages, is all 

 right for the production of a bountiful crop of wheat. 

 Tillage, they think, is the chief desideratum on such 

 soils. Thorough tillage is all that is required for a few 

 years ; but after a few crops hjave been removed, the 

 yield of grain diminishes, for the simple reason that the 

 soil has not been fattened with a direct reference to 

 producing a crop of wheat. The sources of fertility 

 must be husbanded — even in the rich prairie soils of tlie 



