BREAD PLANTS 



19 



A "head" of wheat, three or four inches long, 

 may have fifteen to twenty spikelets filled out, and 

 a few that failed and dried away. Each spikelet 

 had from one to four flowers; so two or three grains 

 of wheat may be the average in each spikelet. 

 Counting them all, the head may yield thirty to 

 fifty grains of wheat. Now count the heads 

 borne by the single plant, and how many grains 

 are the harvest of a single seed sowed? Three 

 or four hundred grains are possible, but not 

 usual. 



Five pecks to an acre is the average amount of 

 wheat sown in the United States. "In ten years, 

 one grain of North Dakota wheat produced 

 300,000 bushels." The average yield per acre 

 in the United States is about thirteen bushels. 

 In the Northwest, sixty and seventy bushels an 

 acre are not uncommon. A thousand-acre field 

 that yielded 51,000 bushels holds the record 

 for a field of that size. Germany and England 

 average more than twice the yield of American 

 wheat fields. Older fields, but better tillage 

 and more fertilizers put upon the land, make 

 the difference. Better farming is increasing the 

 yield of crops, but wheat farming has been one 

 of the worst robbers of the virgin soil of our 

 country. 



