370 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
[September, 
often fails. The cause of failure I think is owing 
to drilling the seed too deep; the ground at that 
season is cold, and seed placed too deeply in the 
soil is a long time coming up; the plants are stunt¬ 
ed, and never after become vigorous. 
The corn drill is much used, though not univer¬ 
sally. Many farmers still prefer to plant with the 
hoe, alleging that the growing crop is more easily 
worked aud kept clean, and that it is less difficult 
to thin out to the right quantity. The extra labor 
in working drilled corn, is more than balanced by 
the extra work in marking out the ground and 
planting with the hoe; but it requires more judg¬ 
ment to thin out drilled corn right, than it does 
when planted with the hoe. Drilled corn is gener¬ 
ally not so much disturbed by birds, as they so of¬ 
ten fail in getting the grain, and, if properly man¬ 
aged, will produce more per acre than when hoed in. 
Experiments in Wheat Culture. 
PLANTING IN HILLS AND HOEING. 
Like all other plants, wheat responds prompt¬ 
ly to careful tillage, and what the limit of the 
amount of labor is which will pay, no one has 
yet ascertained. Up to a certain point, or per¬ 
haps rather to an uncertain point, the more la¬ 
bor and care bestowed the better will the crop 
pay. A correspondent from whose letter we 
quote below, and several others also, find the 
regular hoeing of wheat to pay. For our own 
part we have no doubt it will pay for seed wheat, 
and can confidently recommend the practice of 
planting a patch to be thoroughly hoed, weed¬ 
ed and cultivated for seed. Before the cutting, 
the largest and finest ears should be culled, care 
being taken to secure enough to have sufficient 
seed for a similar patch another year,even though 
the largest and plumpest grains only shall 
be selected, for these alone should be used. 
All the grain from the seed patch would be good 
enough for field sowing, and indeed much better 
than any that could be obtained by screening 
in the usual way. T‘.e ears culled should be 
the earliest and larger t, from those stools which 
had thrown up mo.t stalks; and the grains 
sowed again should : >e the plumpest and largest 
out of these ears. We give here the experi¬ 
ments of Mr. S. Ransom, of Ashtabula Co., O. 
“ On the tenth of September 1859,1 planted one 
acre of wheat, in hills one foot by two feet apart, 
put four kernels in each hill, and covered them 
with the hoe the same as Indian corn is usually 
planted. I cultivated it with the hoe on the 15th 
of October, and again on the 16th of May, with 
the horse and cultivator and the hoe. The soil is 
loose gravel of poor quality, except a very small 
portion from which a barn was removed about 
twenty-two years since, and from which portion 
the following calculations were made : 
No. of hills on the acre. 22,440 
Average No. of stalks in each hill, 73, or on the 
acre. 1,638,120 
Average No. of kernels in each head, 77, or on 
the acre.126,135,240 
Average No. of kernels to the bushel. 848,560 
“ No. of bushels to the acre, according to the 
above calculations as ascertained by counting 
stalks and kernels, one hundred and forty-eight 
and about five-eighths. 
“Planting wheat on poor land is like planting 
other crops upon poor land: it will not pay. 
Make your fields rich, and in a good season I 
will warrant any man one hundred and fifty 
bushels of most excellent wheat upon one acre 
of land, if cultivated as above. On the rich 
bottom lands of the Scioto, Muskingum and the 
Miamis of Ohio, and also oh the river bottoms 
and prairies of the great west, winter wheat can 
not be grown to any extent by being sown 
broadcast, on account of blight or mildew, and 
by heaving out by frosts of winter. By planting 
in rows and hills it would naturally be exposed 
to the action of the sun and winds, and thereby 
prevent blight or mildew, and by covering with 
the hoe, prevent heaving out by frosts, thereby 
securing a good crop. 
CHARCOAL A DRESSING FOR WHEAT. 
“I tried another experiment in 1860. My lands 
are coarse or loose gravel of rather poor quality. 
I sowed an acre of winter wheat (the Blue stem) 
preparing my ground as follows: 
The field was sown with barley in the Spring 
previous; yield small (18 bushels per acre). I 
turned in the stubble the last week in August, 
harrowed it over, then took about eighteen 
bushels charcoal crushed fine, and top-dressed 
a strip through the middle of the acre over about 
one-third of its length; I then sowed on my wheat 
broadcast and harrowed it over twice. The re¬ 
sult was, the heads when ripe were at least twice 
as long as where no coal was put on. I harvested 
all together; the yield was forty-three bushels. 
I think by applying about fifty bushels of coal 
to the acre as a top-dressing, made fine by grind¬ 
ing in a cojnmon bark mill, it would increase 
the yield at least four hundred per cent., if the 
soil is poor. 
BURNED CLAY AND ASHES. 
“In the fall of 1860 I used about one hundred 
bushels of burned clay, taken from a fallow where 
timber had been uprooted several years by heavy 
winds. The soil on which the timber grew was 
burned together with the old roots and clay en¬ 
twined, and perhaps some muck; the whole, ash¬ 
es, clay and muck, after being burned as above, 
was hauled off in a wagon and put upon the 
wheat field as a top-dressing, and harrowed in 
with the wheat. The land was poor quality 
gravel; the yield was about five hundred per 
cent, over the remainder of the field where no 
clay was put. I think there is no fertilizer ahead 
of this as a top-dresser.” 
Toirefied Earth, or Burned Olay, is extensively 
used in some parts of England and Ireland. 
The heavy, clayey soil becomes greatly amended 
mechanically, and besides, the clay thus heated 
absorbs ammonia and holds it, and gives up read¬ 
ily other valuable ingredients which would oth- 
wise be firmly held, and therefore unavailable. 
Rye. 
There is no better test of the hardiness and 
value of rye, than the fact that it has a place 
upon the most exhausted farms. It bears abuse 
and neglect better than almost any other grain. 
The facility with which it can be raised has been 
nearly fatal to much good land in the north. 
When wheat could no longer be grown with 
profit, rye took its place, and as it would yield 
remunerative crops without manure, land was 
sowed to this grain with no other rotation than 
grass, until it would not pay for plowing. It is 
still a common practice, notwithstanding the in¬ 
road new ideas have made, to turn up old pas¬ 
tures and exhausted meadows and sow with iye 
without any manure. A crop of ten or fifteen 
bushels will about pay expenses, and many 
farmers are satisfied with this scanty yield. 
A rich hazel mold, well drained, or naturally 
dry, is the best soil for rye. If it is light, it should 
have manure. The great luxuriance of this 
plant upon newly cleared forest land shows that 
it delights in a soil well stocked with food. It 
is a good plan to manure broad-cast, aud plow 
in ten or twelve loads of stable manure or of 
good compost, but stiff more important to apply 
a part of the manure, which should be well rot¬ 
ted compost, to the surface, and harrow in with 
the seed. One of the best dressings for this crop 
is ‘fish pie,’ or compost made in June, and applied 
in September at the time of sowing. This is a 
favorite manure along the sea-board, in the rye 
growing districts. The fish are sometimes ap¬ 
plied broad-cast to the green sward several 
weeks or even months before the land is plowed; 
but this is a very wasteful practice. No better 
rye is raised in the world than along the shores 
of Long Island Sound, with this fertilizer. A 
yield of forty bushels to the acre, under favorable 
circumstances, is sometimes realized. 
It is very much better to use some manure and 
get twenty five to thirty bushels to the acre, 
than to sow on sward or stubble, and get ten 
without any manure. As rye will sprout at a 
very low temperature it may be sown late, but 
does much better to be put in in September. If 
it grows too luxuriantly, it may be fed off in 
October with calves or young stock. Sheep are 
apt to feed too close and pull up the roots. Late 
feeding is injurious, as it would leave the roots 
altogether too bare for winter. 
The true place for rye is not as a crop to filch 
from the soil its last elements of fertility, but to 
come in, in a judicious rotation of five or six 
years. A good farmer ought to be ashamed to 
raise less than twenty five bushels to the acre, 
when, with a little more manure, he may just 
as well get thirty five. Rye should have its 
place in the rotation until we have brought up 
our farms to a condition where they will grow 
wheat, an event that is sure to. follow tile-drain¬ 
ing, and a higher state of fertility. 
We have not as many varieties of rye as of 
wheat, and not much is generally known except 
of the common winter grain. Spring rye is very 
little grown, most farmers preferring Spring 
wheat or barley, where they have land in con¬ 
dition for any Spring grain. The white rye 
raised extensively in New-Jersey is a fair, hand¬ 
some article, about the color of red wheat, large 
and prolific. It is not yet very widely distribu¬ 
ted, but enough is already known of its pro¬ 
ductiveness, hardiness, and other good qualities 
to .determine its value. There is a fine field 
here for the enterprise of some wide awake farm¬ 
er. This grain is as susceptible of improve¬ 
ment as wheat or barley, and a few years of 
careful cultivation from select seed would give 
us improved varieties unquestionably much bet¬ 
ter than any thing we now have. 
This grain is highly prized in all the districts 
where wheat is not raised. Chemical analysis 
shows that it is but a little below wheat in nutri¬ 
tive value, and this estimate is confirmed by the 
analysis of the stomach.’ Well bolted, it makes 
excellent bread, the best substitute we have for 
the wheaten loaf, and by some preferred to that 
standard article. As a variety, it is highly rel¬ 
ished at most tables, if not in the loaf, at least in 
short-cakes and biscuits. The bran is indispens¬ 
able in the loaf of brown bread, which is a good 
old institution handed down from our grand¬ 
mothers, and which we trust will be perpetu¬ 
ated to the latest day. 
The straw, always the most economical 
bedding for stables, has of late years become of 
considerable value in the arts, selling as high as 
fifteen dollars a tun. But this of course only 
benefits the farmers in the limited districts near 
the factories. In the packing of winter fruit, it 
is thought indispensable by some of our best 
fruit growers. Rye has always a good home 
market, is one of the surest crops, and deserves 
more careful culture and selection of varieties 
