THICK SEEDING OF MILO IN THE SAN ANTON I<) REGION. 3 
appearance may be delayed until fche plant is is inches or more in 
height. Tillers seldom appear after the stems of the plants have 
begun to develop, particularly if the plants are left close enough 
together to shield the lower parts from fche light. The development 
of tillers is largely controlled by the distance aparl of the plants 
and, to a lesser extent, by the soil and climatic conditions. Tillers 
have small heads and are later in maturing than the main stalk. 
Branches indicate abnormal conditions and do not appear until the 
plant is well along in its growth. They occur only when the plants 
are spaced too far apart in the row or are supplied with an abundance 
of moisture. Every node above the ground except the terminal node 
may produce branches. The heads of the branches are still smaller 
and later in maturing than those of the tillers. 
Branching is even more objectionable than tillering, as the ripening 
season is still further extended. Branches occur in abundance only 
when the plants are too far apart in the row and the temperature and 
moisture conditions are exceptionally favorable for a heavy vegetative 
growth during the latter part of the season. 
EXTENT OF SORGHUM-MIDGE DAMAGE DURING 1913 AND 1914. 
The season of 1913 was very favorable for the production of grain 
sorghum. Although the rainfall was about 2 inches below normal, 
the crop did not suffer severely from drought. The crop was well 
past the flowering stage before the sorghum midge appeared in suffi- 
cient numbers to do serious damage. Consequently, the insect had 
very little, if any, effect on the yield, even of the later plantings. 
On the other hand, the season of 1914 was particularly unfavorable. 
The spring was unusually wet and cool, and, owing to these conditions 
at and after planting time, such poor stands were obtained that it was 
necessary to replant twice, which made the crop so late in coming to 
flower that there was a rather severe infestation of the midge in all the 
plats. This late flowering afforded an opportunity for determining 
the effect on the yield of suppressing the tillers and branches. 
Suppressing the tillers, and thereby causing the plant as a whole to 
flower more uniformly, was of little value as far as the sorghum midge 
was concerned in 1913, but in 1914 the yields were extremely low on 
the plats where the plants tillered and branched freely. These low 
yields were due entirely to the fact that the heads of all the tillers and 
branches were sterile, owing to the ravages of the midge. 
RESULTS OF THE EXPERIMENTS. 
Experiments were conducted at the San Antonio Experiment 
Farm in 1913 and in 1914 to determine the effect of planting milo in 
rows at different distances apart and of thinning the plants to dif- 
ferent distances within the row on the tillering, branching, uni- 
formity, date of ripening, and yield of grain. These experiments 
are reported and discussed in this bulletin. 
