St. Landry democrat. (Opelousas, La.) 1878-1894, 1888-03-03
THE WHEAT FIELD.
How to Obtain Satisfactory Yield Wit

How to Obtain a Satisfactory Yield With
out Special Effort.
The best yields of wheat that | re-
member to. have seen here were on
three adjoining farms in this town.
two of them fields of seven acres each.
one of three acres. The two fields or
seven acres were grown by my neigh
bors, and the threc.acre field by my
self. All the fields were a fine, gray
ely. or perhaps some would say a
sandy, gravelly soil. All were sown
after an oat crop had been harvested.
The oats were grown on corn stub
BILE. Readers will see that three crops
were grown on the land such as are
considered exhaustive. All the crops
in succession were abundant, i'll fact.
quite large. The ground was we'll
MANFRED for the corn crop; the sod
was turned under in the spring before
planting and the crop titled by level
cultivation. The oat crop followed
without manure of any kind. We top
dressed slightly with fine manure for
the wheat, and the wheat was put in
with drlll-one and three-fourths
bushels per acre-early in September,
The season proved II very favor
able one in this vicinity, and the crop
on each field was nsidered remarka-
BILE. as two of them threshed out over
forty bushels to the acre; the other
the writer's--a little less. What
caused the above yield to quite an ex-
tent was the nearly perfect cleaning
of the seed sown, consequently at the
harvest no foul seed was found in the
crop 10 depress the yield. or TO depre-
ciate the quality of the grain. Two of
the fields were on land adjoining the
highway, and from their excellence
they were the cause of remarks by
many passers-bY. who stopped to COM
ment on their excellent quality and
the clean appearance of the grain. ]
had purchased a new tanning mill that
cleaned all grain much better than the
mills heretofore in use in this section,
and the seed had all been cleaned in
that mill before being sown. One of
the parties bought this seed as extra
clean, and when he told the farmer he
bought the seed wheat from that he
was going to have it recleaned before
sowing, he expressed great surprise
that any person should think of clean
ing such nice seed wheat rs that was.
I told him when he came to have his
seed cleaned to wait till we had run it
through the mill before he decided
that it was already clean. The look of
surprise on his countenance when he
saw the foul seed cleaned out was
pleasant to see Il will take back
this refuse" he said. land show the
man 1 bought the wheat of how foul
it was" These three fields of wheat
were the best I ever saw and the
cleanest grain. The great secret of
success was clean seed and good soil
| well-tilled and o favorable season.
Clean seed will work wonders on the
farm of every farmer who practices
the cleaning of all the seed he scws.
whether wheat Or coarser grains. The
variety IF wheat was called Jarvis in
this section. The ordinary farm inn
plements were used-plow, cultivator
and Scotch harrow and grain drill
for the fitting and seeding, and the
self-raking reaper for harvesting.
which was done before the grain was
ripe enough 10 shell. but we'll out OF
the dough state. The wheat was put
| in in the fall of 1880, and harvested in
1891 which was q fayOrab g season
here for the wheat crop. No special
effort was made for either piece ex-
cepting the extra cleaning of the seed
sown.-Rurdk NeW Yorker.