SPRING WHEAT IN THE GREAT PLAINS AREA. 35 
Methods covering a wide range have been under trial in attempts 
to grow spring wheat each year since the station was started in 1908. 
Practically no success has attended these efforts. The crops have 
been lost by hail, drought, and soil blowing. In only three years of 
the six have any yields at all been obtained. In 1909, 9.1 bushels 
per acre were obtained from summer tillage and 8.8 bushels per acre 
from ground furrowed with a lister in the fall. In 1913 green manures 
and summer tillage produced yields not exceeding 1.1 bushels per 
acre. In 1914 yields were obtained from all methods except on those 
plats which were exposed to blowing from adjoining fields. The 
highest yield of spring wheat yet obtained on the station was 13.5 
bushels on fallow in 1914. 
While feed crops and late-planted crops have been grown here 
with success, the type of soil represented on the station farm is not 
adapted to the growth of small grains under the climatic conditions 
that exist. 
AMARILLO FIELD STATION. 
The soil at the field station at Amarillo, Tex., is a heavy clay silt. 
It is of the type locally known as "tight land" or "short-grass land." 
While the evidence is not as complete as could be desired, it appears 
that the storage of water and the development of the feeding roots of 
the crop are interfered with by a comparatively impervious layer of 
soil in the third foot. The soil above this, however, is competent to 
care for all the water that it has been possible to store, even under a 
system of alternate cropping and summer tillage. 
The results of six years are available from this station. The year 
1910 is not included; owing to a forced necessity for changing the 
location of the farm, the crops of that year were all grown on land 
uniform in its preparation. 
Following corn, where the fall plowing is necessarily late, spring 
plowing has averaged better than fall and exactly the same as disked 
corn ground. Following both wheat and oats, fall plowing is done 
early, and has averaged better than spring plowing. Furrowing 
with a lister has averaged better than plowing. Subsoiling has 
resulted in exactly the same yields as plowing the same stubble at 
the same time without subsoiling. 
Green manuring has been productive of practically the same yields 
as upon land from which a grain crop was harvested. Summer til- 
lage has succeeded in raising the yields in a marked degree, but not 
enough to furnish compensation for the use of the method necessary 
to obtain them. 
