THE WHEAT CFLTUEIST. 



273 



A correspondent of the " Rural E^ew Yorker" wrote on 

 this subject : " The reason why spring wheat growing is 

 attended with such ill success in Western ]^ew York is 

 that the fallow was not fall ploughed, and consequeutlj 

 is sown too late in the spring." The great secret of 

 success in growing a bountiful crop of spring wheat is 

 the proper management of the soil, the main point being 

 to plough and fallow in the fall, or before the ground 

 is too hard frozen in winter, so that the wheat may be 

 sown as early in April as the spring rains will admit. 



Many farmers who succeeded so early in growing a 

 crop of wheat from the scarified virgin soil in the early 

 days of Western Kew York, now think that the deteri- 

 oration in that cereal is owing to the exhaustion of a 

 m^^sterious pabulum in the soil. Yet, to grow a good 

 crop of barley, requires a finer tilth and a less adhesive 

 soil than for wheat. 



J. B. Lawes, the prince of England's experimenters 

 on the farm, avers " that he could supply fertilizers to 

 the wheat fallow to produce a given crop of wheat to 

 the acre, subject only to the risk of hail and violent 

 storms." But in England the wheat plant rarely if ever 

 freezes out, as it often does in winter and early spring 

 in the United States, California and the South excepted. 

 It is the freezing out of this plant that prevents the 

 western farmers of Wisconsin, Illinois, and Iowa from 

 sowing winter wheat. But they have reduced the sow- 

 ing of spring wheat, as a substitute, into a perfect sys- 

 tem that rarely fails to succeed if well done. (Read mv 

 notes about spring wheat under the last heading of the 

 second chapter of this book, and How Freezing aud 

 Thawing of the Soil injures Growing Wheat, pages 123, 

 124, and 125. ) 



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