— 25 — 
Colorado will eventually accept and practice them, and 
thereby increase the quantity of their crops and improve 
their quality. But the point to be considered here is this: 
most of the tests in 1897 were made by persons who had 
never grown beets before; they violated all of the proper 
methods and still produced large crops of good beets. 
What stronger proof could be obtained that the soil and 
climate of Colorado are especially adapted to the sugar beet ? 
One of these rules is that sugar beets should never be 
planted on new ground. Such soil it is claimed is so full of 
soluble salts as to make the beet too impure for factory use. 
Chas. Johnson, at Atwood, reports that his beets were 
planted on newly broken land and they tested 15.2 per cent 
sugar and 82.4 per cent purity. Sidney Flinn, at Caddoa, 
under similar conditions on rather clay ground, which in 
Colorado would ordinarily be very rich in soluble salts, pro- 
duced beets that contained 19.4 per cent sugar. Though 
the purity was not determined, it could scarcely have been 
less than 83 per cent. 
The only other two persons who reported beets on new 
ground, had samples taken in September before the beets 
were ripe, but even in these two cases the beets tested bet- 
ter than the average of their neighbor’s beets on old ground. 
There were six cases reported where the beets were 
raised on ground that had been broken a year before and 
had raised one crop before the beets. ^ These give uniformly 
fine beets and average 17.3 per cent sugar and 82.6 per cent 
purity. 
All rules for sugar beet culture say to subsoil if possible, 
but if not, to plow very deep, and better if plowed in the fall. 
No subsoiling was done by any of the farmers; about a 
third of them plowed in the fall and but few plowed more 
than eight inches deep. It is probable that subsoiling in 
Colorado under irrigation is labor lost. Deep plowing is an 
advantage with the clay soils, but in the alluvial soils of the 
river bottoms which will be the land most used for beet cul- 
ture, the roots go deep into the soil, whether the plow is 
run deep or shallow. 
Another point was noticed in all the fields visited. The 
beets grew with the entire root under ground. This makes 
a little more labor in digging, but it lessens the amount of 
the top of the beet that has to be cut off with the leaves and 
increases the amount of sugar in the upper part of the root. 
It is probable that this fact goes far toward explaining the 
higher average quality of Colorado beets over those of the 
neighboring states. Just why the beets should grow so in 
Colorado is not yet evident, unless it is due to the furrow 
