The Milan exchange. (Milan, Gibson County, Tenn.) 1874-1978, 1882-03-18
Hills VS.. Drills.


1t is easy enough to understand that
planting corn in hills or punching the
plants is all well enough, when ''the
dung and the manure and fertilizers
are placed in one spot, as the common
custom is in growing corn on the soils
OF the East. And on the strong soils of
the West, there can be little objection to
the same method, when corn is raised
for the purpose of feeding stock, and
where small and numerous ears, togeth-
er with an abundance of leaves and
stalk, are preferable for feeding to large
ears and less fodder. Again, where land
has become so foul with weeds and grass
that the corn will be overgrown if the
method of hills, which will admit of
cultivation both ways, is not adopted,
planting in hills seems to be the only
way of making a crop, except with the
extra labor of hoeing, which will not
pay, or at least not generally, for one
crop. Nevertheless, with all these con-
ditions, it is plain that that method of
planting which distributes the crop in
way that will secure the greatest
amount of available plant-food to each
stock is the best, and is the sufficient
explanation for the change from the old
custom of corn in hills to the new one
of corn in drills, now so generally COM
ing into fashion in the best corn grow
ing sections. But the style of punching
corn in hills, if it ever existed, is seldom
now seen south of the black soil. the
rule being one stalk in place, but put
as near each of its neighbors as expert
ence has taught the plant will ear. In .
the winter wheat region proper, say I'M
der latitude thirty-eight degrees, the
stalks will be found to stand three or
three and a half feet apart each way. In
the upper cotton belt the distance will
be found perhaps six inches more, and
under latitude thirty-two degrees and
below, four and five feet is the common
rule. But this widening of the distance
Is forced upon cultivators not so much
on account of the lack of the soil in the
essential elements of plant-food as in
the necessity for free circulation of air
for plants in all warm climates, close
planting resulting in the drawing up
of vegetation very closely resembling
that which follows where plants under
glass do not get enough air.
On the question of ''cOrn in hillsp
VS.. "corn in drills" there is still in
Illinois majority who favor the former
fashion. But there is also a strong and
growing party who have demonstrated
to their own satisfaction that if corn for
the strong black soil is planted in drills
four feet apart each way, with single
stalks twelve to fifteen inches apart,
the yield will be increased from ten to
fifteen bushels per acre; and if the land
be foul and require hand hoeing, the
extra expense will be paid in the in
creased product. But whether the
change from hills to drills will be fast
or a slow one, it is among the certain
ties of the fnture--because no rule or
custom of agriculture is Strong enough
or fixed enough in the agricultural
mind to resist the logic of the fact
that when soils are losing a portion of
their original fertility, plants must be-
dispersed and more thinly distributed,
and in direct ratio to the measure
of the impoverishment of the soil. -
Cor. Prairie Fqr3ner.