THE HOW'CTTLTHEE EOH WHEAT. 
CULTURE FOR WHEAT. 
ume%offthe Agriculturist, it is 
b’CiVoll ATI 1 A G r\-\-XT ^urTl DQ f 1 r» 
October to March, I feed half a bushel bffearrots 
and three quarts of cob-meal to each horse daily. 
They keep in good flesh, and I think they are better 
than if fed on grain* alone, or rather, if the value of 
the carrots was gVen in grain. 
There are other ^nsiderations of importance to 
the farmer in roottcrops. The extra quantity of 
manure and the fine Sndition they leave the land 
in for any otner crop,*ftonsider carrots and sugar- 
beets among^he most profitable crops that I grow. 
Lynn'jMaWkFeb. 3 18-^6. J. H. C. 
the'*r , 1 
1 ^ the las 
recommenfleu W fames' should sow wheat in 
rows; and* it h^lueen a Matter of astonishment to 
me that th& a||rcultural *p|ess has not urged this 
subject mor^and thatifarmery have not made ex¬ 
periments at least, and reportedprogress. Although 
I have been tf T sM»§iif^r to the Genesee Farmer 
from its commlhcetiip'nt,<&nd to the Cultivator since 
the union of thm t\\y>, ar^f^so to your paper since 
its commencem^j^ yet I hive not seen in them as 
much on this subject as wo&tfd fill one side of this 1 
sheet (d). f • 
I will relate^ as briefly as I can, what experience 
I have had oriole subject. Three years last Sep¬ 
tember, I left lMfew|rods square unsown, in the 
middle of a twenlylj&e lot of clean summer fallow, 
the harrows paS&iiw over it two or three times 
while harrowing tHe rest of the field ; I then imme¬ 
diately drew little drill's with a hoe, 12 or 15 inches 
apart, and sowed wheat in them, covering it up 
with the hoe. Wb'enNtlre- ground became suffi¬ 
ciently dry in the spring, I went to the patch with 
my hoe, and hoed the spqc^s well, once over, pull¬ 
ing out such weeds in the roW v s of wheat as were 
likely to prove injurious. On pne other occasion, 
when the wheat was knee hig4, X pulled out a few 
more weeds from the rows. When the wheat was 
ripe, I reaped the drilled pafiSlkby itself, and an 
equal space of ground of the sowfol wheat adjoin¬ 
ing ; the two lots were threshed separately, clean¬ 
ed, and weighed, and although I h'^e not the note 
of the exact amount of wheat, quantity of ground, 
&c.,yetl perfectly well remember that the result 
was in favor of the drilled wheat, 10 bushels per 
acre, it being at the rate of nearly 37, and the 
sowed wheat, 27 bushels per acre. I was surprised 
at this result, as the straw w T as longest and the 
sheaves largest on the sowed part. The heads, 
however, on the drilled part, 'were larger, the straw 
stouter and heavier, and the grain plumper. 
A similar experiment on a few square rods of 
ground was tried the following year, but from care¬ 
lessness no calculation was made. The drilled 
wheat, however, was kept separate, and was at the 
lute of 38 bushels per acre; it had the advantage of 
growing on the richest part of the field. This, 
however, was not the case in the experiment of the 
year before. These two small experiments are all 
that I have made in drilling grain, during more than 
20 years that I have been engaged in agriculture in 
America. The want of a drilling machine, and the 
presence of stumps and stones, have rendered it dif¬ 
ficult to do much at it; and now that these obsta¬ 
cles, except the first, are no longer felt, loss of 
t 
health interposes to prevent much experimenting, 
or the adoption of new and unusual methods. 
Man.y years since in England, I put in a field of 
six acres- of wheat (a clean fallow, clay land, and 
rather ptfor) on the plan practised by Tull. It was 
plowed into ridges from 4 to 5 feet wide, and two 
rows of wl$eat8 or 9 inches apart, drilled as near as 
possible in\the top of each ridge. The after cul¬ 
ture was strictly Tullian ; a good furrow was 
plowed from the rows of wheat before winter, and 
plowed back to,the wheat in the spring, when the 
narrow spaces Were hoed by hand, and all weeds 
pulled out; two more furrows were plowed from, 
the middle of the .alleys towards the wheat, vdien 
it was from one to two feet high. The crop was 
kept by itself, and yielded 32 bushels per acre of 
the very primes! wheat—our usual crops were from 
15 to 40 bushels pei;acre. Perhaps there may not 
be much advantage -\h this wide system of wheat, 
except we wish to cultivate it for many years in 
succession. I.find by referring to Tull’sffiook, tbat 
his sixth crop was better than any of its predeces¬ 
sors on the same land, without manure of any kind ! 
and I was informed that, in a later edition of his 
book, published a little before his death, it was 
mentioned that he had tlje thirteenth crop growing 
on \Yie same land: without , dung or summer fallow, 
during the whole 13 year^and that it was the most 
promising crop of the whole thirteen! I do not 
know the number of bushels per acre raised by 
Tull; he does, however, incidentally mention 6 
quarters (48 bushels) pel acre as one of his crops. 
. If I understand Tull, his opinion was that land 
rfdtujcally suited for any crop, and once put into 
prime order for producing that crop, will continue 
to produce good crops till the world’s end, provided 
the crop is so planted that half the land can be 
tilled while it is growing, the tilled half being 
more enriched by imbibing the fertilizing particles 
in the dews and rains, than the other half is impov¬ 
erished,by the crop, so that the land grows richer 
every year. If this is true, the knowledge of it is 
of immense value, and if false, it is time that its 
falsehood should be shown by actual experiments. 
Its falsehood, in theory, has often enough been 
shown of late, but nothing is proved by closet 
theories till carried out in practice. 
Auburn , Feb., 1846. A Subscriber. 
(a) If our Correspondent will look over the back 
numbers of the Agriculturist again, he will find 
frequent recommendations (short to be sure) there 
to sow wheat in drills, particularly in Vol. 4, page 
240. We should have written more on this sub¬ 
ject, had not two of our friends, who are large 
growers of wheat, promised us some articles. 
The principal objection we have heard to drill sow¬ 
ing in this country is, that it tillers out much more 
than when sown broadcast. We cannot understand 
how this should be, if the drills are not over cue 
foot apart; and if it does tiller out more, will it not 
produce a greater crop, provided the soil has the 
elements in it to form a due proportion of grais 
to straw? We shall be glad to hear from ex¬ 
perienced wheat growers on this subject. W« 
must confess that we are greatly in favor of drilling 
in wheat as well as most other grain crops. 
