Jasper County Democrat, Volume 20, Number 23, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 June 1917 — MODERN CORN CULTIVATION [ARTICLE]

MODERN CORN CULTIVATION

Shallow Plowing to Kill Weeds Has Been Found the Best. Corn cultivation should be as shallow as possible, providing that it kills thb weeds, according to the results of the Purdue experiment station. Deep cultivation late in the season will cause heavy loss. “It probably will pay to cultivate corn deeply the first time if the soil has been beaten down by. hard rains,’’ says J. C. Beavers of the. Purdue station, “but corn should not be cultivated deeply after the plants are eight inches high.” When the corn gets this high the roots cover the space between the rows and trap the moisture as fast as it comes from the lower soil layers, hence it is more important to avoid injuring the roots than to attenvpt w to conserve moisture by deep cultivation. Cultivation one and one-half inches deep gave four bushels of porn per acre more than cultivation four inches deep, in a nine year series of trials by the Ohio experiment station. In the work of the Purdue experiment station it has been found that, shallow scraping of the surface with no other object than to cut weeds gave three bushels more corn per acre than where ordinary shallow cultivation was practiced, Weeds growing unrestricted reduced the yield from 56 to 22 bushels per acre. ' These experiments show that it is essential that weeds be killed, but that when that is done the chief purpose of cultivation has been accomplished.