Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 49, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 August 1875 — Preparation of Ground for Wheat. [ARTICLE]

Preparation of Ground for Wheat.

’The best fanners of the present day do not spend more time, labor or expense in preparing their field for wheat seeding than was common forty or fifty years ago. We think they use less of each, the difference between modern and old methods being that the former are better directed and the work is not done so much by what sailors call “ main strength and stupidness.” If would go hard indeed with modern farmers if they put more preparatory work on their wheat fallows than is implied in the old-fashioned way of plowing and cross plowing successively three, four, or even five or six times in a season, especially if the land was infested by thistles or other perennial weeds. Much of this labor was wasted, and we are inclined to think worse than wasted, by misdirection. used to te a common remark among shrewd, practical farmers that good wheat was rarely grown where land had been plowed to kill the thistles—to use their phrase, “it killed the nature of the land” —not a very accurate or scientific explanation of the result, but certainly a most expressive one. Stated more accurately, this excessive plowing reduced land to so fine a tilth that it held too much moisture. Hence in winter and spring the soil became compacted by the particles runningtogether in a more or less thin mud. The frost hove out the roots of winter grain on all such land, while so soon as dry weather came the surface formed into a crust which gradually hardened downward through the summer. It is little wonder that good crops of wheat could not be grown, unless in exceptional seasons, by such methods as these. The bad effect of excessive plowing in breaking up the natural water-courses through the soil is now quite generally conceded. One deep plowing does not have this result, for, unless the soil is entirely bare of vegetation, the decay of the sod beneath the farrow tends to establish other water-courses in place of those which the plow has interrupted. The approved practice of best farmers is to plow only once for wheat. Turn as good a sod as possible under the furrow and afterward work altogether upon the surface. Work the ground often, for the more frequently it is stirred the shallower it can be cultivated, killing all weeds at the first rather than letting them take root, making deeper cultivation necessary. The old-fashioned harrow or drag is one of the very best implements ever put into a summer fallow, and it would be a good thing if all fallows could be cultivated by that alone. The drag compacts the soil and rarely if ever scratches more than two or two and a half inches deep. The deep cultivation sometimes given by horse cultivators going down and turning up the soil four or five or more inches is little less injurious than the old-fashioned method of cross-plowing. We know too well why this deep cultivation is practiced. Weeds are allowed to grow in summer fallows until nothing but deep plowing will uproot them. Even then it- is better to make the cultivator teeth sharp, so as to cut off obstinate roots, and then keep it not more than three inches deep. Ifjhe fallow is dragged once a week with a well-sharpened tooth-drag it will cut off or break on thistle roots more perfectly than less frequent but deeper cultivation would do.

Next to a drag the roller is the best implement to use in preparing a seed bed for wheat, and for much the same reason. It compacts the soil and helps to make a fine tilth but shallow seed bed. The drag alone rakes the clods of earth on the surface, leaving it rough and uneven. This is not an advantage, as many have hastily guessed from a few experiments. Land left looking rough and full of hard clods of earth generally produces better wheat than where the surface is mellow and smooth. The reason is that these rough clods on the surface show frequent use of the drag, while the mellow, smooth surface shows more frequent use of the cultivator. Break these surface clods still more by going over after each dragging with a cultivator or clod-crusher, which will compact the soil but leave the surface in better tilth for a seed bed, and the wheat will be still better. The drill will bring up enough clods to the surface to protect the wheat all that is possible, and these ridges left by the'drill should be left as nearly perfect as possible. A mellow seed bed, but a shallow one, is the result to be aimed at. With this mellow seed bed secured we do not care how hard and unpromising the soil beneath may be. Winter frosts will mellow it sufficiently for the roots of wheat the second season, and if we could prevent it we would never have a wheat plant strike its roots deeper than three or four inches in the fall. Lateral extension of the root to hold the surface soil in a solid body to rise and fall together is what is wanted. With such a mat of roots even the past severest winter within our remembrance did not destroy nor greatly injure some fields of wheat, while others, apparently nearly as thrifty in the fall, but whose roots struck downward, were almost entirely winter-killed. This lateral growth of roots is encouraged by keeping the under soil hard and also by surface manuring and the use of commercial manures drilled in with the seed. Ip no other way can we account for the remarkable effects of light applications of superphosphate on wheat the past season; Where stubble-ground is plowed for wheat the same general principles hold good as for summer fallows. Half the failures of wheat on oat or barley stubble come from a second plowing, or such deep cultivation as to amount to the same thing. It is the common experience of farmers that stubble ground got in hastily and roughly gives better wheat than with more careful culture—often better than the pet summer fallow. This would not be so were not the labor so generally misdirected. Plow as early as possible. Work as much as possible with drag and roller, and if you cultivate, go shallow to disturb the decaying stubble as little as possible. By always cultivating shallow and using the drag and roller as much as possible a stubble ground can be made very nearly .> equal to the best summer fallow, and better far than the average of those which are thought to be most thoroughly (and deeply) cultivated.— Rural New Yorker. *

A strange case of poisoning has (says the Paris correspondent of the Echo) just happened at Conde. A man engaged in smuggling Belgian tobacco into France clothed himself from neck to foot with tobacco leaves, and then put on his ordinary garments. But, unfortunately, the weather was very hot, and he had some distance to walk before crossing the frontier. So he got into a violent perspiration, which resulted in such an absorption through the skin of the poisonous qualities of the fragrant weed that the poor smuggler was taken ill on the way, was caught by the Custom-House officers, and now lies in a dying state. —A railroad man has been made chief of police in Chicago, and it is expected that every patrolman ip that city will be immediately provided with a cow-catcher.