Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 171, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 July 1915 — Syracuse Man Finds Sunflowers a Paying Crop [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Syracuse Man Finds Sunflowers a Paying Crop

SYRACUSE, N. Y. —E. K. Barlow% a resident of Syracuse, may yet go down to fame as the originator of a new crop in this country. Last year he raised a few sunflowers and saved the seeds. He was astonished at the number of seeds one sunflower pre-

duced, and it started him thinking. He discovered that sunflower seeds were valuable, and he offered to furnish seed, as long as the supply lasted, to whoever wanted to plant them. He has received 60 letters inquiring about the raising of sunflowers, ranging from Malone on the north to Jacksonville, Fla., on the south, east to the Hudson river and west to Montana. The sunflower has generally been

regarded as simply an ornament, but it appears that it has real utilitarian value. Mr. Barlow says that calculating on the basis of the performance of his plant, the production of one acre of 7,000 hills would total 3,500 pounds of seed, equivalent to 700 pounds of oil (93 1-3 gallons), 2.800 pounds of oil cake. 15 tons of stalk, producing 600 gallons of alcohol, “leaving over 13 tons of residue, value and use not yet determined.” The sunflower is a hardy and prolific plant. It will grow in almost any soU and needs no coddling. It would seem, therefore, of considerable value as a crop on land that was of little value for other crops. There are many small spaces on every farm that are not utilized and on which sunflowers could be raised. If Mr. Barlow is not off in his reckoning, it would pay farmers to utilize these waste places by growing sunflowers on them. There are also thousands of acres of land so poor that it does not pay to plant the ordinary crops on it; but sunflowers would surely grow there.