Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 16, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 January 1875 — Grain Farming. [ARTICLE]

Grain Farming.

The intelligent proprietor of a grain farm aims to select such land as will be properly adapted to the crops which he proposes to cultivate. If the object is to cultivate only a few of the cereals —say wheat, barley, oats and Indian corn—the soil selected will consist largely of loam or be composed of alluvion, in which argulaceous and calcareous material abounds. In many instances there will be no opportunity for a choice of land, as every tillable acre will consist of heavy clay or a mixture of different kinds of soil forming heavy land, which is well adapted to the production of the sorts of grain alluded to. In grain farming the aim is, as far as may be practicable, to adapt the system of management, the mode of culture and the kind of crops to the soil rather than to attempt the injudicious experiment of adapting the soil to the crops. Every product of the farm should be favored with a congenial soil —indeed, this is eminently essential—whenever the farmer desires to produce the largest maximum yield per acre. A fair crop of excellent wheat may be produced on a light sandy soil; but such land will not furnish a congenial sub-bed for growing wheat. Barley, for example, may be raised on light mucky soils; but some other crops may be produced on such land with far more profit, as a mucky and peaty soil is deficient in tho|e elements of fertility which make a congenial soil for barley As all soils are spoken of by working farmers as either heavy or light, the proprietor of a grain farm will always select land that is neither too heavy qor too light. There is a grade of soils between the heavier and the light which it is always desirable to secure. Yet, where the choice lies between light and very heavy it will be more satisfactory in every respect to choose the heavy land, as such ground will be found more congenial to a larger number of crop plants than the light soil. Besides this, the heavy soil is susceptible of being brought to a higher state of fertility than the very light land, and the fertility can be maintained from year to year with less labor and fertilizing material than where the soil is so light and porous that the elements of fertility are not retained for the use of growing plants. When a supplv of phosphatic, nitrogenous, or other fertilizing matter is incdrporafed with a heavy soil, larger than is essential to meet the requirements of the growing plants, the adhesive, argillaceous portion of the seed-bed envelops the valuable elements of fertility and retains the minute atoms until the numerous spongioles of crop plants, spread, through the soil the succeeding season, lay hold of and appropriate the rich pabulum that has long been held in store. The intelligent proprietor of a grain farm, if he has adopted a system of progressive agriculture, chooses rotation of crops. Here also the important principle of adaptation must be strictly observed. On the heavier kinds of lands the following rotation system will be found quite satisfactory in nearly every respect, namely: Indian corn, barley, oats, wheat and red clover. The crop of red clover should be plowed under the next year after seeding. On some grain farms the system of rotation is varied from the foregoing, thus: Indian corn, oats, rye and red clover. In some locations rye straw is. so valuable at markets in certain cities that certain farmers prefer to raise rye instead of wheat, as the remunerative price received for the straw, together with the returns for the grain, will greatly preponderate over the profits of a crop of wheat on the same ground. Besides this there is no other crop among the cereals with which the seed of red clover can be sown with the same assurance that there will be “ a good catch” as with rye. A crop of clover in a judicious rotation is more valuable and more important than a crop of rye or wheat. Red clover .will „ catch” satisfactorily in some instances with wheat, oats or barley. But as oats and barley are so liable to yield such a heavy and dense burden of leaves near the ground the young clover is often in danger of being smothered to a ruinous extent. — N. Y. Herald.