Dry Farming In Colorado 
37 
so serious a problem that the slight cost of seed treatment is very 
cheap insurance. 
BARLEY 
One of the most certain grain crops for feed purposes on the 
plains is barley. No winter variety has yet been found which is 
able to withstand the dry, cold winters. Consequently, spring 
varieties will be used exclusively when barley appears in the crop¬ 
ping system. Experience has shown that barley does as well on a 
seed bed prepared by disking and harrowing in corn stubble as it 
does after summer fallow, and even better than where the land is 
plowed especially for this crop. In some localities fall listing, 
where the previous crop will permit such treatment, working the 
listing down in the spring to a seed bed, has been found as suc¬ 
cessful and cheaper than fall plowing. 
Varieties .—The varieties of barley which do best on the plains 
are both two-row and six-row. Of the two-row, the Hannchen 
and Hanna have been the best. Of the six-row types California, 
or Coast, as it is now called in a good many places, and White 
Smyrna, a variety recently introduced by the United States De¬ 
partment of Agriculture, are the best,'in a number of trials made 
at different points on the plains. The so-called Bald barley, or 
White Hulless barley, which is properly called Nepal, is a six- 
row hulless barley, probably the best of the hulless barleys for 
dry-land growing. This barley is better for barley hay or for 
hogging down than any of the two or six-row types mentioned 
above, but it does not yield so heavily. The best practice would 
be for neighborhoods to grow not over two varieties, one hulled 
variety and one hulless. Thus the seed problem and marketing- 
problem would be almost automatically taken care of. 
A large number of other varieties of barley have been grown 
and are being grown, but the varieties given have sufficient merit 
so that they should predominate to the exclusion of the other 
varieties. Barley is being grown for feed, and to some extent for 
a cash crop. As a feed, it supplies the same place that corn fills. 
OATS 
Oats are not a very successful crop on the dry lands, but may 
be sometimes grown. When so grown they will be grown almost 
entirely for feed. Oats will very rarely make yield enough to be 
used as a cash crop. Kherson are the best oats to use if oats are 
used at all. 
FLAX 
Flax is not adapted to the entire Colorado dry-farming area. 
It is well adapted to that portion of the great plains lying on the 
Arkansas-Platte Divide and northward. Owing to the fact that 
