— 5 — 
is planted to corn. A factory to be profitable must have at 
its command the beets from at least two thousand acres. 
There are several places in the Platte Valley where five 
times that amount is now yearly cropped in potatoes and 
equally large bodies of land are devoted to corn in the 
Arkansas Valley. 
PLOWING. 
A common cause of failure among beginners in sugar 
beet culture is a lack of thorough preparation of the soil. 
The sugar beet grows with the entire root below ground, 
and as this root should be at least twelve inches long, it fol- 
lows that only the deepest of plowing will make a suitable 
condition for its growth. The land should be plowed in 
the fall and subsoiled to a depth of fifteen to eighteen 
inches. This is especially necessary in an irrigated district, 
for under irrigation, where the ground is plowed eight 
inches deep year after year, there is a layer of soil just be- 
low the furrow that becomes very compact and so hard that 
the roots of the sugar beet cannot penetrate it. 
If the plowing is done in the fall, nothing more will 
be needed in the spring but a thorough harrowing just 
before planting. The harrowing should be continued un- 
til the ground is very fine and smooth. If the plowing is 
done in the spring, it should be delayed until just before 
planting, so that the weeds that have started will be killed 
and the beets have a chance to grow before the next crop of 
weeds appear. 
•PLANTING. 
The planting is done in drills and may be by hand or 
machine according to the size of the field. The best results 
are obtained by hand planting, but this is too expensive for 
a large field. An ordinary garden drill does very good 
work, but on the large scale some machine drawn by horses 
will be employed. There are special horse drills made for 
the planting of sugar beet seed and these are the imple- 
ments mostly used in the vicinity of factories. For the one 
\vho wants to experiment or grow a few acres for stock 
feed, an ordinary wheat drill makes a very good substitute. 
In the 8-hoe drill leave open the first, fourth and seventh 
hole and stop up the rest. This makes the rows of beets 
twenty-four inches apart, which is none too far for irriga- 
tion. Suppose the first hole on the right-hand end of the 
drill is left open, and seeding is begun at the 
right-hand end of the field. Then the first time across, the 
right-hand wheel of the seeder is run close to the edge of 
