Great Falls weekly tribune. [volume] (Great Falls, Mont.) 1894-1???, 1895-02-15
SURFACE
Shallow Cultivation Advocated For Oats,
Wheat, Sweet Potatoes and Corn.

OOnV NSC SOIIlS~ WV
Shallow Cultivation Advocated For Oats,
Wheat, Sweet Potatoes and Corn.
During tho past ten years most of the
farmers of my acquaintance have learn
ed that they can grow much larger crops
of oats with three inches Of tho surface
soil made fine than to plow six or eight
inches deep. ! have practicod this meth
cd of putting in oats for 10 years and
have grown much larger crops than for
nerly, and have not had asinglo failure,
while under the old way we had fro
Cuent failures. The foregoing is from
the pen of the successful farncr and
we'll known agricultural writer, Waldo
r.. Brown, who has tho following to say
in q communication to Prairie Farmer:
1t is IA great advantage to prepare the
seed bed for oats with al improved har-
row, for one team will put in as much
land in u day as three teams will to
break the land and harrow and roll UNI
til it is fine. We often have but a day
or two of fine weather at a time i'll
March when tho land is dry enough to
work, and when our clay upland gets
thoroughly saturated wo often must
wait q week or two before it dries so as
to DO fit to work. 1t is a great advan-
tage to adopt a speedy method, for usu-
ally early sown oats yield much moro
than those sown late. usually first use
a disk harrow and then SOW the oats
and cross harrow with an Acme harrow,
which is tho best implement to give a
fine, level seed bed that l have ever
used.
| am told that this method of putting
III oats is now almost universally adopt
ed, and that whenever farmer begins
it in u n~eighborhood in a few years all
tho rest follow this plan. 1t is now uni
versally acknowledged that a shallow
seed bed produces the best wheat, and
wheat on such land endures the winter
better, and this was found out by OBJ
serving that where tho horses turned on
tho plowed land and tramped it SO hard
that barely enough loose earth could be
had to cover tho seed with tho crop
was better than on other parts OF the
field, The same is truo of sweet potatoes,
and this fact, which was discovered
from setting plants on hard tramped
land, has led to shallow blowing and
the making of small ridges for the crop,
and the result is a large increase in
yield and better shaped tubers.
l meet occasionally at the institutes a
man acknowledged by his neighbors to
be one of the best corn growers of tho
locality, who claims that the Same kind
Of a seed bod gives the best crop of corn,
and there is an increasing number Of
farmers each year who have found that
shallow cultivation which stirs two
inches of tho surface soil in the corntield
gives much better results than tearing
the roots of the corn with plows that
run four to six inches deep.
In my Judgment, the implement which
will give perfect surface cultivation il
the cornticlds is yet to be invented, and
when it is we want il made SO that il
will cover these rows of corn and enable
us to stir the soil on u strip not less THAI
ten feet wide at each time through. Any
of the good weeders Will do this to per
lection on some soils and under favor
able conditions, but it is not yet what
we want in the large corntields of the
west. The reason we want to get over 4
wide strip is that the best work is done il
tho corntield soon after "a rain, when thu
land will Crumblc at "a touch and The
weeds will be killed before they SEQ til,
light. l have ne doubt that inventive
genius can give us such an implement.
or, if not one that will cultivate three
rows, at least two. The Acme harrow
makes an ideal seed bed, and the prin
ciple Of slicing and turning the surface
soil ought to be applied in our corEfield'
In cultivating, and | see no difficulty il
the way of using the slicing cultivate
in the cultivation of corn.