4 
BARLEY 
One of the commonest mistakes in raising barley, is 
not to give it water enough. Barley will grow and make 
a crop on a small amount of water. Even at Eort Collins, 
which is in the arid region, a crop of barley can be 
raised one year in three, without irrigation. Because of 
these facts, farmers are inclined to slight the crop, and 
when water is short, give it to the other crops. xinother 
peculiarity of barley is, that it does not show to the eye 
the need of water, until it has suffered beyond redemp- 
tion. When barley grows with a shortage of water, it re- 
tains its natural color, but fails to grow long straws and 
stools but little. It throws all its strength into form- 
ing the heads, and these begin to show at scarcely eight 
inches above the ground. Water applied at this stage, 
will carry these heads on to ripeness, but will not pro- 
duce much more growth of straw, no more stooling, and 
the heads will have but few kernels. 
Barley prefers an open, warm soil, tending to clay 
rather than sand, with good drainage and not much 
alkali. It does better on rich land, and thrives well on 
land the first year after treating with stable manure. 
But, of course, in this latter case, it requires much more 
care in the irrigating and considerably more water. 
When well fed and watered, the growth is enormous and 
the probability is, that some of it will lodge. Our experi- 
ence on the College Farm is, that lodging does but little 
damage. The heaviest yields we have ever secured have 
been from fields that were badly lodged. One in particu- 
lar, lodged quite badly and went down flat. But the last 
few inches of the stalk turned up enough to keep the 
head off of the ground, and, though hard to cut and bind, 
the grains were plump, well filled out, and the yield 
enormous. 
The treatment of the subject of barley in the follow- 
ing pages will be from the standpoint of the feeder. Col- 
orado can grow first-class malting barl3y, can obtain as 
many bushels per acre as Iowa or any other of the barley 
growing states, and usually has dry weather at the time 
of barley harvest, so that the crop is secured without 
discoloration and in the best condition for use. There is 
a moderate local demand for malting barley, and, up to 
the point where this demand is supplied, barley is a more 
profitable crop than wheat. 
