PRACTICAL PAPERS—WHEAT CULTURE. 
245 
nor secures sufficient fineness and lightness of it, nor destroys 
weeds. I am inclined to think that ranking second to no other 
cause of failure in wheat-growing is that of the foulness of 
the land with weeds. No good crop of anything can be 
grown in partnership with weeds, and especially is it difficult 
thus to obtain wheat. When the new soil is first turned over 
it is comparatively free from these pests. Under the common 
mode of cultivation their numbers increase every year. 
As a specimen of the kind of culture under which wheat¬ 
growing ceases to be profitable after a few years, take this 
from Mr. Harris’ “ Walks and Talks on the Farm,” in the 
American Agriculturist for July, 1870. A friend visiting Cal¬ 
ifornia writes him that he was told “ 110 bushels of wheat had 
been raised there on one acre of land.” “Another gentleman 
of unquestionable veracity,” he writes, “told me that he had 
harvested from three acres of wheat 308 bushels. But,” he 
adds: 
“ You never saw sucli farming. They plow only two or three inches 
deep, and crop the land with wheat year after year, for from ten to twenty 
years. The consequence is their land has become foul, and now they do 
not average more than twenty bushels per acre. What is needed to reno¬ 
vate their land is a rotation of crops and deeper plowing. 5 ’ 
The department report for 1866, says of wheat culture in the 
same state: 
“ The majority of cultivators throughout the state have pursued the fol¬ 
lowing plan, which not only gives a very small return for the land cropped, 
but also exhausts it of its fertility at a rapid rate.” 
Then follows a description of what is termed the “ volun¬ 
teer” process of crops, by which a second, and sometimes even 
a third crop is obtained without plowing or sowing, and from 
seed scattered from the first crop. The report continues: 
“ As a general rule, grain lands receive neither manure nor rest, the 
same ground being cropped with wheat for seven or more years continu¬ 
ously. A better system of cultivation is being inaugurated in some por¬ 
tions of the state, by cropping one year, and summer-fallow’ing the next. 
By this plan, land that did not produce over tw r enty bushels per acre, when 
cropped continuously, has yielded over forty bushels, of a much improved 
quality.” 
