Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 41, Number 60, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 April 1909 — Poor Show for a Very Big Wheat Crop. [ARTICLE]

Poor Show for a Very Big Wheat Crop.

Indiana will not have a “bumper” wheat crop this year, but as for oats and corn the records may be broken if increased acreage is an indication. There will be a little clover, and timothy does not now promise an average crop. Pasturage prospects are bright only in spots where the drought last year did not burn out the grass. Special reports to the Indianapolis News from its correspondents at county seats, based on interviews with farmers, grain dealers and those bankers who watch crop conditions closely, show that the winter wheat acreage is much smaller than for many years. They also show that tho con dition of the growing wheat is not good; in fact, that in a large number of counties it is poor. Many farmers last fall planted seed in dust, and as little rain fell for weeks after the grain was sown, the seed did not minate in time to form a good stand before freezing weather set in. A good deal of this sickly wheat was plowed under during the winter. Absence of snow, which serves as a blanket, coupled with alternate freeznig and thawing, heaved many wheat plants out of the ground, and during the dry spell in March a great deal of the heaved wheat was blown away. Even should present prospects improve, it is doubtful if, with the decreased acreage and the present backward condition of the plants, there will be more than two-thirds or threefourths of a normal crop. The dry fall and the open winter enabled farmers to plow when they willed. As a result plowing has been completed in some counties and in others it is further advanced than in former years. The ground is mellow and is easily worked. Some fields that were plowed for oats were pulverized into dust by the plow. Clods were scarce, and the planting of oats was easy. Disk harrows are already at work in the southern and central counties putting the soil in condition for planting corn.