DRY FARMING IN SOUTHEASTERN WYOMING 5 
RESULTS WITH SPRING WHEAT 
The spring-wheat area in Wyoming was 44,000* acres in 1912 
and 160,000 2 acres in 1923. The increase has come about by 
breaking up the native prairie sod. The general method of pro- 
duction is to spring-plow the land once in two or three years. The 
crop is seeded on the plowed land and also in the stubble of the pre- 
vious small-grain crop. Often the stubble is not even disked, but 
this is more .especially true with winter wheat and winter rye than 
with spring wheat. 
The annual and average yields of spring wheat by different 
methods for the 10 years from 1914 to 1923, inclusive, are given 
in Table 2, and the average yields are shown graphically in Figure 2. 
The highest average annual yields were 24.8 bushels per acre in 
1915 and 23.3 bushels per acre in 1918. There has been no com- 
plete failure of spring wheat in any year, but the yields by all or 
most methods were very low in 5 of the 10 years. The low yield 
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Fig. 2.— Average acre yields of spring wheat grown by different methods at the Archer Field Station for 
the 10 years from 1914 to 1923, inclusive. The average following flax, spring plowed, is for the 9 years 
from 1915 to 1923, inclusive 
in 1920 was largely due to late seeding, but in that year and also in 
1919 and 1921 the yields were reduced by rust. The 10-year average 
yield was 10.9 bushels per acre. 
The highest 10-year average yield, 13.3 bushels per acre, was 
obtained in a 4-year rotation in which wheat follows peas plowed 
under for green manure. This is 3 bushels per acre more than the 
yield following rye as a green manure. As the relative response to 
peas and to rye turned under as green manures was about the same 
in other rotations in which they were followed by oats and by winter 
wheat, the possibility that the better showing of peas might be due 
to chance seems remote. The yield, however, is not enough greater 
than that on fallow to pay for the cost of seeding the green-manure 
crop. The average yield on nine fallowed plats was j 1.8 bushels 
per acre, only 1.5 bushels less than the average yield following peas 
plowed under. 
1 U. S. Department of Agriculture. Bureau of Statistics. Statistics of the principal crops. Jn U.S. 
Dept. Agr. Yearbook, 1912, p. 570. 1913. 
2 Statistics of important crops by States, 1921-1923. Spring wheat. In Weather, Crops, and 
Markets, v. 4, p. 670. 1923. 
