The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1885-09-16
COrnstalks with Two Ears.

Many good farmers make practice of
going through their corn-felds, before
harvesting, and cutting out for seed the
stalks having two or more good ears.
This is a good plan for making the corn
more productive, but it should be re-
membered that much of the seed-corn
grown two ears to stalk is fertilized
by the pollen from stalks that do not
produce single ear. Thus the ten
dency to increase productiveness is
more than neutralized. 1t would seem
good precaution to go through the
field as the corn is in tassel and remove
all stalks that do not show signs of pro-
ducing even single ear. The labor
required to do this would be in part off
set by the labor saved in cutting and in
handling stalks without ears when
husking.
SO says an exchange. 1t is only
on very small scale that inquisitive
farmers would be likely to try this
experiment, though it would be an
interesting one. But before beginning
it, would it not be well to inquire
whether we want two ears of corn on
every stalk? "Why, of course we do"
some one will say. Friend Someone,
do you know that one good ear to a
stalk will make one hundred bushels of
corn to the acre? 1t is a fact. Now
suppose you get breed of corn that
will produce two good ears on every
stalk, as large as the one ear previously
borne-just tell us, good Someone, how
you are going to get plant-food enough
into your soil to produce two hundred
bushels of shelled corn to the acre.
You cannot do it. Nobody ever did, or
ever will do it. When you get, in your
garden, kind of corn that will set two
ears on stalk, uniformly, and plant
the seed in your field for crop, at the
usual distance and with the usual fer
tilization, what you would get would be
either two small nubbins to a stalk, or,
more likely, an occasional good ear,
and the rest nubbins or empty husks.
If you are to get the two full ears on
each stalk you must plant it very wide
apart, make the ground very rich, keep
it very clean, and raise perhaps, with
good luck, seventy or eighty, and pos
sibly one hundred, bushels of shelled
corn on an acre.
Where, now, is the gain in your two
cared corn over a one-eared kind,
planted closer? AS for ourself, we
prefer one-eared corn. A kind that
will give us single good long perfect
ear to every stalk is far to be preferred
to one that gives the same measure of
corn on two cobs-if for no other
reason, because you will have only half
as many ears to husk, handle and shell.
No one is more in favor of improving
our corn than we are, and few have
done more experimenting with that end
in view, or have grown more bushels
to the acre in Vermont. But in this
experimenting we have been made to
understand that the factors of large
crop do not necessarily include two
cared variety. Some stalks of any good
kind, well cared for, will produce null
tiple ears, and some stalks will be bar
rem, or nearly so, in any kind we ever
saw. But good seed, of good kind, in
good land, with good culture, will give
Just as much corn on kind setting
chiefly one ear to stalk as on kind
setting chiefly two ears to a stalk, with
the decided advantage of larger ears.
The writer of the extract given above
is plainly theorist who does not test
his theories by hard facts.