108 
THE CULTIVATOR. 
fit of the Henrico one, and some others now existing in 
that State, and above all, if they will inculcate in all 
classes the idea that honest industry and labor is al¬ 
ways honorable, she will soon find her population rap¬ 
idly increasing, and cease to feel the drain that by emi¬ 
gration removes the bone and sinew of the State, to fill 
up the new States and territories of the broad West. 
Culture of Corn. 
In a late number of the Hamilton Intelligencer, Ohio, 
is a valuable article on the cultivation of this great 
staple of the West, (and which is scarcely less essen¬ 
tial to every part of the country where it can be grown, 
being, in the language of Mr. Taylor, meal, meat, and 
meadow,) from the pen of J. McMillikin, Esq. The 
substance of his experience and observations, he has 
summed up in the following rules, which, marked as 
they are by good sense, we feel a pleasure in transfer- 
ing to the columns of the Cultivator : 
(t 1. If the ground intended to be cultivated in corn has a sod 
upon it, it should he broken up in the fall or winter preceding 
if the weather be suitable, if not it should be plowed in Feb¬ 
ruary, or at least in March. If not level, it should be rolled, 
and if not mellow it should be harrowed before planting. 
2. If stubble or corn ground, no stubble or stalks should be 
removed, unless taken to the manure pile—should be plowed 
six inches deep, and if not mellow should be harrowed. 
3. While small, the corn should be harrowed, and the ground 
should afterwards be kept loose and mellow by the repeated 
use of the cultivator. 
_ 4. On sod ground a plow should never be used in the cultiva¬ 
tion of corn. 
6. On other ground, the plow should never be used after the 
roots have extended any distance from the hills, and at no time 
unless indispensably necessary to prevent the ground from 
baking. 
6. The fibres or small roots of the corn should not be cut; 
the cutting off of every fibre deprives the stalk of some part 
of its nourishment. 
7. The earth should not he thrown high upon the hills, as it 
induces the throwing out of additional spur roots. A very 
slight portion of mold may be placed around the hill. 
8. The ground in the cultivation of corn should be kept as 
level as possible, to permit the roots to extend in every direc¬ 
tion, and to retain moisture. Ridging cuts the roots—prevents 
the extension of the surface roots—drains the water from the 
hills—exposes more surface to the action of the sun, and is 
therefore injurious to a crop in a dry season.” 
We are glad to see the attention of farmers turned to 
the corn crop, and the best method of cultivating it ; 
for its importance can hardly be overrated, and what 
we deem some very absurd and injurious practices are 
common in its treatment. As far as Mr. M.’s rules go, 
they have our hearty concurrence, and there is little 
doubt if generally adopted, the corn crop would be ma¬ 
terially increased. The plan of plowing up land in¬ 
tended for corn in the fall, we know to be a good 
one. as frost is one of the most efficient of pulve¬ 
rizers, and the soil in the process receives a more per¬ 
fect aeration than it would if turned over immediately 
before planting. But before the plowing, the ground 
should be covered with long manure, since it is a fact 
which should never be lost sight of by the corn grower, 
that corn is one of those crops that cannot be fed too 
high. There are some soils too, which being naturally 
moist, and having never been drained, would if planted 
on a level surface, or without being ridged, prove too 
wet for the young plants, although not perhaps so, 
when farther advanced ; but on a soil well drained, and 
in good condition, ridging or hilling is useless, or even 
worse than useless. 
Perhaps there are few opinions more intrinsically 
erroneous than the one which supposes the corn plant 
to be benefited by mutilating the root, which have 
obtained a wider credence than that. It is directly at 
variance with every well established principle of vege¬ 
table physiology, and is opposed by the experience of 
multitudes of the most successful corn growers in the 
country. Liebig, in his invaluable work, asserts, and 
no one can controvert his position, “ That the size of 
a plant is proportioned to the surface of the organs 
which are destined to convey food to it. A plant gains 
a new mouth and stomach with every new fibre of root, 
and every new leaf.” But the notion in question, sup¬ 
poses that the best way to make a plant flourish is to 
destroy all its mouths, and compel it to form new ones, 
if nature is competent to the process. Corn is always 
benefited by frequently stirring the ground, and as 
plowing does this, the advantage conferred has by some 
strange process of ratiocination, been supposed to be 
the result of cutting the roots. 
It has become a common practice with some of the 
most skillful farmers in the New England States to seed 
down their corn ground with clover and other grasses, 
the seeds being sown and covered at the last time of 
hoeing. In doing this, hilling would be impracticable, 
and the object with the farmer is to have the ground 
left as level and smooth as possible. Experiments 
carefully conducted, show a decided advantage in fa¬ 
vor of level culture over hilling, and we have never 
heard an instance in which the soil was in a good con¬ 
dition in which the culture without hilling failed. The 
idea that hills are necessary to support the corn, is 
without any real foundation. Nature provides for this 
emergency herself, in causing sets, of brace roots to 
shoot out, as soon as the plant requires them. 
It is not probable, such has been the unfavorable 
state of the season in its early part, that a great crop 
of corn will he grown the present year ; still where the 
culture has been good, and proper seeds have been se¬ 
lected, a fair reward for labor may he expected. In 
the cultivation of plants, no glaring departures from na¬ 
ture can he tolerated ; we may improve, but we cannot 
control, and all attempts at such unwise interference, 
will he defeated. Manure highly, plow deep, make 
your land dry, use none but good seed, keep the surface 
frequently stirred, and you may safely leave it without 
any inequalities, and permit the roots to dispose of 
themselves as they think proper. 
Blight or Mildew in Wheat. 
There are very few years in which millions of dol¬ 
lars are not lost to the farmers of the United States by 
Mildew or Blight, and this fact is sufficient to justify 
the most anxious care to discover the cause of the dis¬ 
ease, and a method of prevention. That the mildew 
or blight is a fungus or parasitic plant, is well known 
to all who have paid attention to the subject, hut as it 
never fixes on a plant in a sound healthy condition, the 
cause of the disease which invites it, is the real ques¬ 
tion at issue. This subject, in consequence of the dam¬ 
age it has occasioned to the crops in Pennsylvania, 
within a few years, has of late attracted much at¬ 
tention among the practical and scientific farmers 
of that state, and several papers on blight have been 
read before the Philadelphia Society for the promo¬ 
tion of Agriculture. Two of these have fallen under 
our notice ; one by Kenderton Smith, Esq. and the 
other by James Gowan, Esq. Both are papers exhi¬ 
biting much acquaintance with the subject, are written 
with ability, and a short notice of them, showing the 
opposite conclusions at which they arrive, may be use¬ 
ful. 
Col. Smith’s paper, which created no little sensation 
at the time it was published, attributes the great pre¬ 
valence of mildew to the practice now so prevalent (and 
which, if not objectionable for the cause stated, so im¬ 
portant to the farmer) of sowing grass seeds upon wheat, 
or in other words by an effort to secure two crops at once, 
putting the safety of the most valuable in great dan¬ 
ger. 
Col. Kenderton Smith says, 
“The matted coat of grass when thoroughly saturated in 
moist seasons, by impeding the sun’s rays causes an excess of 
moisture in the soil, and preserves the earth at the root of the 
grain, too cold and wet to maintain a healthy vegetation of the 
plant at its near approach to maturity. * * * This checks 
and renders languid the circulation of the sap at the very time 
when nature indicates that not only the stalk but the soil should 
be basking in the heat which prevails at that season of the 
year.” 
Mr. Gowan dissents from this opinion in toto, and 
insists that the grass has no influence in producing mil¬ 
dew, but that on the contrary to a certain extent it op¬ 
erates as a preventive. He says— 
“I hold that the prevailing cause of blight in this country is 
owing to the sudden heat and cold to which the wheat is often 
exposed in June and beginning of July—and this I will attempt to 
explain. The wheat plants at the period of filling, naturally 
send up or yield most generously the juice requisite to furnish 
the heads with seed or grain. This process will be more or less 
accelerated by the action of the sun, in proportion as he is mild 
or intense. If the heat be great and of two or three days contin¬ 
uance, the plants will be greatly excited. In this state, should 
the sun suddenly withdraw, the wheat exposed to a merciless 
N. W. or N. E. that sinks the temperature instanter some 20°, 
the chilling cold of which no instrument can fully represent, 
animal and vegetable life being only capable of realizing it—is 
it to be wondered that so sudden a check to the pulsation of 
the excited wheat plant should prove fatal to them 1 The cold 
winds blowing on the head and neck of the plant, chills it at 
the very point of exposure, the head becomes languid or torpid, 
while from the density of the plants and the heat of the earth, 
there is a genial heat and moisture below—the fountain that 
supplied the head keeps bubbling up and flowing on, hut the 
functions of the head reservoir, or condenser, have ceased ; it 
can take no more ; in such a case the fountain or conduits must 
burst; both or either do, and hence the rust that is observed on 
the plants, which is but the outward sign of the disease that is 
preying on the vitals within. After a lapse of a day or days 
the sun returns and blazes on the diseased head, which having 
neither health or moisture in it, cannot but wither and die un¬ 
der his influence. This, then, is the prevailing cause of the 
blight of wheat in our climate .” 
Who shall decide when doctors disagree ? May not 
these antagonist writers both be partly right, and both 
partly wrong? Both agree that there must be a great 
degree of heat, both that there must be an excess of 
moisture to produce blight, both that there is a forced 
and unnatural vegetation, and so far they are doubtless 
correct. Col. Smith maintains that the 1 matted grass’ 
keeps the soil cold and wet; Mr. Gowan that this cover¬ 
ing preserves a ‘ genial heat and moisture,’and here, of 
course they are as wide apart as the poles. If this 
covering of grass produce cold in the soil, it must be by 
evaporation ; hut evaporation from a covered surface 
proceeds so slowly that such an effect is rarely if ever 
produced. On the contrary such a covering of grass 
preserves the temperature of the soil, by preventing 
both radiation and evaporation, and here, we think, 
Mr. Gowan is right. But if, as all appear willing to 
concede, the disease arises from too great an accumula¬ 
tion of vegetable juices in the vessels of the plant, 
caused by heat and moisture, the two grand agents of 
all vegetable growth, then a reduction of temperature 
at the root of the plant would be the most effectual 
means of checking this accumulation, and for this pur¬ 
pose a free circulation of air, and a clean surface, ad¬ 
mitting of both radiation and evaporation, would he most 
efficient, and here, we think Col. Smith comes nearest 
the mark. 
We have, in the course of our farming, experienced 
the bad effects of blight to a considerable extent, and 
have hence been induced to examine the subject with 
more attention. A few years since a field of sixteen 
acres of beautiful wheat was so injured, that it was 
not worth the labor of cutting : it was, in fact, totally 
destroyed. In this case, and in all others, where Our 
wheafhas felt the blight, the attack has been preceded 
by warm, close, sultry, weather, with frequent showers, 
and every circumstance favorable to a rapid vegetation. 
The vessels of the plant were evidently unnaturally 
excited and pressed, and at the same time the continu¬ 
ed moisture softened the still tender cuticle or covering 
of the stem, and lessened its powers of resistance. 
The microscope shows that in this state the covering 
hursts or cracks longitudinally, the partially elaborated 
juices escape, and these, it seems to us, furnish a nidus or 
place of reception for the minute seeds of the fungi, 
which always accompanies blight, and the seeds or 
sporules of which constitute the red powder or rust al¬ 
ways found on wheat that is blighted. 
Atmospheric agencies have a great influence, doubt¬ 
less, in causing this disease of wheat, hut we have not 
been accustomed to attribute so much effect to changes 
of temperature as does Mr. Gowan ; and it struck us 
as not a little singular, that while the first half of his 
paper is devoted to proving that sudden changes of 
temperature are the cause of this evil, the last part 
should be an argument to prove the frequency of this 
disease in British wheat, a country where the climate 
is more equable, the range of the thermometer less, and 
the changes less sudden and extreme than in almost 
any other. 
But we do not believe that sowing grass seeds with 
wheat, or the most sudden and extreme changes of 
temperature, will always produce blight, or that a 
perfect freedom from all plant will always exempt it. 
Experience negatives this position. The sixteen acres 
of wheat above alluded to was not sown with grass 
seeds, yet it was lost; and the tens of thousands of 
acres annually sown with wheat and clover satisfacto¬ 
rily shows that something besides ‘ matted grass’ 
is required to cause blight. 
Wheat, early sown, on soils naturally dry, or made so 
by draining, we have found to escape blight more certain¬ 
ly than any other. It has usually passed the stage in 
which mildew commences, before the season arrives in 
which the causes of that disease are most active. On 
the contrary, late sown wheat does not come forward 
until the hot sultry heats of the summer have come on, 
and these when combined with moisture are most sure to 
produce mildew. Wheat that is winter killed badly, is 
frequently so much retarded as to be overtaken by mil¬ 
dew and rendered worthless. If one part of a field or 
neighborhood is lower than another, the lowest part 
usually suffers most. Wheat highly manured, especial¬ 
ly if sown late, rarely escapes being more or less blight¬ 
ed ; and for this reason, fresh or unfermented manure 
should not be applied to the wheat crop. 
In England, in districts subject to blight, it is cus¬ 
tomary to sweep the wheat fields, while the crop is in the 
stage most liable to its attack, with a rope carried by 
two men, and as long as the width of the lands, or the 
labor of carrying will permit. The rope drawn in 
this way agitates the grain, and causes the super¬ 
fluous moisture to he dislodged from the stalk and 
head, thus preventing that softening which would en¬ 
sue if the moisture was allowed to remain. This 
roping of wheat” is sometimes repeated several 
times in the season, particularly if the weather is fa¬ 
vorable to the development of the mildew, or symp¬ 
toms of the disease exhibit themselves in the grain. It 
has been found by experiment, that if the grain is so 
far advanced as to be fully in the milk at the time of 
the attack, that if the grain is cut at once, and is cur- 
ed in a proper manner, the grain will be far better, and 
make better flour, than if allowed to stand. When cut 
in this way, the stem contains as much elaborated sap 
nearly as the perfection of the grain will require, but 
if this is allowed to escape, as it will if the disease 
progresses, the berry will be deprived of all its proper 
nourishment, and the consequence will be a shriveled 
worthless grain. 
The conclusions at which we have arrived respect¬ 
ing blight, are as follows : 
1. That an excess of sap hurts the skin or epidermis 
of the plant, and by alloxving the juice necessary to the 
perfection of the berry to escape, causes it to shrink. 
2. That in this extravasated juice the sporules of the 
wheat fungi, fix themselves, their roots penetrating the 
stem and thus increasing the evil, while their speedily 
matured seeds, shed over the grain, give the red appear¬ 
ance so characteristic of mildew. 
3. That blight rarely attacks wheat unless a degree 
of temperature above 70° has for several days been in¬ 
dicated, accompanied by a great quantity of moisture, 
and a stagnant condition of the atmosphere. 
4. That late sown, or highly manured wheat, is more 
liable to the blight than that ivhich matures early, or 
that grown on soils where the manure has been applied 
to some previous crop. 
5. That while a thick coating of grass, by preventing a 
free circulation of air around the plant, equalizing the 
temperature, and freeing them from useless moisture, has 
a tendency to produce blight, it will not do so, unless 
the other predisposing causes we have enumerated, are 
also present. 
6. That the sowing of clover and grass seeds with 
wheat is of so much consequence to the wheat grower, 
is such an essential means of fertilizing the soil, and 
such an important part in a well conducted rotation, 
that it ought not to be abandoned, except on the clear¬ 
est evidence, such as we think has not yet been pro- 
duced, that it is the primary cause of blight, and 
certainly not until other means of prevention have been 
tried and failed. 
