Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 50, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 September 1875 — Concentrated Culture. [ARTICLE]

Concentrated Culture.

Years of experience in the culture of wheat have remonstrated one fact preeminently—that it is time, labor and" money thrown away to attempt to raise a crop without careful culture. The one great fault of too many is to attempt to cultivate too much. Concentrated culture is what is needed. Put the time, labor and manure on less land, and more will be produced. Thorough drainage is .absolutely necessary to prevent freezing out in winter. If you have intended to put out ten acres on laud not ftoroughly drained, put out half, or one-third or one-fourth as much, and expend the balance of the labor in draining, and you will get more wheat. A goo<h rich soil is abeolutelv .necessary to prevent winter-killing as well \s to furnish the necessary food for the Xante. If your soil is not in this condiV and you have intended to spread

manure over ten or fifteen acres that is insufficient for five, stop and consider before you commence. It is better to raise 100 bushels from five acres than fifty from ten. Again, you can, perhaps, put enough labor upon five acres to put it in the best condition; spread the same labor over two or three times the surface, and you lay a good foundation for a failure. Concentrated labor pay’s in all crops, but in none so well as wheat. We saw one piece of three acres that yielded, thia year, over sixty bushels, while the average yield of that’section will not behalf that . The owner told us that he had intended to put in the w hole field—six acres —but concluded to try concentration of labor and manure, and the result proved the wisdom of his conclusion. The field was clover sown with some timothy, and the three acres saved furnished excellent pasture this season. He intends to treat it this fall just as he did the other half last fall, which is now well seeded to clover and timothy again. If you have no soil well adapted to wheat, don’t cultivate wheat. Cultivate something that it is adapted to—some crop on which you can depend? In a good season soils not well adapted to wheat will produce good crops, even under ordinary care; but such seasons do not come once in ten years, perhaps, and it will not pay to run the risk. —Ohio Farmer.