The Iola register. [volume] (Iola, Allen County, Kansas) 1875-1902, 1883-01-26
Growing Wheat.

wherever grain Is grown. Upon farms
where the dairy IS the chief interest
wheat may be dispensed with, rs it can
be bought more cheaply than it can be
grown. But where cattle or sheep, or
both, are fed and fattened for market,
wheat should be the main crop, not only
for the sale of the grain, but for the
straw, which can be used for litter or
for feeding, where no other litter can be
procured. 1t may be that wheat can be
grown in the west tribe cheaper than
it can be east of the great river. But,
then, farmers on this side Of the Mis-
souri, can and should produce double the
yield of the western grain fields, and
they are gradually approaching that
point. The report of the Secretary Of
the Iowa State Agricultural Society for
1881 shows this, when it gives the yield
Of Iowa as only eleven bushels and says
''Iowa farmers laugh at the farmers Of
New England, who, on their rocky land,
produce more than fifteen bushels to the
acre, while they, on their rich new land,
gather only eleven bushels" But the
average yield of wheat in New York in
the best wheat districts in the western
part of the State has now increased to
over twenty bushels per acre and is
rapidly rising. And this increase will
and must become larger and larger as
the soil becomes richer by more liberal
manuring and better cultivation, until
it approaches or surpasses the large yield
of English farms, where a common re-
turn is equal to forty bushels to the
acre.
Land may be too rich for wheat. 1t
will not do to laugh at the Iowa farmers
because they raise but eleven bushels to
the acre when they can turn the laugh
upon their competitors by pointing to
their magnificent corn fourteen or six
teen feet high. But the soil may be too
rich even for corn, and force this gigan-
tic growth of stalk without adequate
yield of grain. And this is the reason
to a large extent for the low average
yield of wheat in the new rich prairie
States. This, however, does not apply
to the worn soils of eastern farms, which
have been under cultivation for many
years. Here a course of rehabilitation
must be pursued. And it is always
slower process to build up than to pull
down. Things fall of their own weight,
but when they are to be lifted up energy
of force must be applied. Besides, in
growing crops much indirect and inter-
vening work must be done before we can
touch the point we aim at. And this is
true in growing wheat.
Wheat requires that every element of
its substance be supplied in the soil.
There may be abundance of lime, potash.
phosphoric acid and magresia. but if the
nitrogen be deficient the yield will be
small. In like manner if nitrogen be
abundant and the minerals be deficient,
. there may be large growth of straw but
small product of grain. Many farmer
has richly MANFRED his land, hoping to
get large crop, but has seen his hopes
laid low by the lodging of the grain
of the straw. And on this ac-
count wheat cannot be grown most sue
cessfully except under system of high
feeding of cattle, through which the soil
is also highly fed. and by the use of
fertilizers. England has imported mill
ions of tons of special fertilizers for use
in her wheat fields, and the large yield
of fifty or sixty bushels per acre has
been produced only by the liberal use of
these fertilizers and by the equally
liberal employment of imported artificial
feeding stuffs, as .oil-cakes of various
kinds, by which large quantities of
manure have been made. Yet it is
Question of the deepest interest to
American farmers if they can profitably
follow the practices OF the English
farmers and whether smaller yields
grown with less high culture may not be
more profitable. 1t is not always the
largest yields that produces the most
clear profit, and this applies to the
western farmers, who can better afford
to grow ten or fifteen bushels of wheat to
the acre by scratching over their corn
stubble with a harrow and sowing the
seeds in this cheap manner than by pro-
ducing twice as much with more costly
cultivation by the dear labor which they
would be forced to employ. 1t is not
safe or wise to laugh at another mans
ways or methods until we can put our
selves into his place and see with his eyes.
The problem before every farmer
whose land has passed its freshness and
inherited our natural fertility is how to
make the most from it at the least ex-
pense. This is business. And farming
is close and exacting business which
tries the patience and the skill Of the
farmer, for it is subject to thousand
difficulties and vicissitudes which must
all be met and overcome. And as re-
CARDS wheat-growing, he has to consider
how he can arrange the business of the
g., 20 10 hno fha
crop, and then to SECURE the largest yield
by the most skillful cultivation. There
can be no doubt that the only way in
which this is to be done is to feed stock,
even if some grain food is to be pur-
chased; to make manure; to grow heavy
crops of grass and clover and corn, and
perhaps make use of the system of en-
silage to cure the corn, which then should
be grown for fodder and not for grain. |
A large quantity of fodder is indispensa-
BILE, because this cannot be purchased.
If twenty-five tons or more of green fod-
der corn can be produced upon an acre
of land no other crop can possibly COM
pete with it in value, and if this can be
preserved in silo at low cost no other
method of curing can compete with that.
If forty acres of land can be made to
produce 1000 tons of the best kind of
fodder, it is very easy to see that 10
head of stock cattle can be fed for six or
seven months upon it, and that the flesh
and fat put upon these animals by this
feeding, helped by a few tons of corn and
cotton-seed meal, will produce very
large income, of which nearly the whole
will be profit. Besides, there will be an
enormous quantity of manureof the rich
est kind made, which, put upon the corn
stubble in September, viii be able top pro-
duce very respectable crop of wheat.