The Ohio Democrat. (Logan, O. [Ohio]) 1886-1906, 1895-02-09
SURFACE CULTIVATION.

Shallow Cultivation Advocated For Data,
Wheat, Sweet Potatoes and Corn.
During the 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 the surface
soil made fine than to plow six or eight
inches deep. have practioed this meth
cd Of putting in oats for 10 years and
have grown much larger crops than for.
merly, and havono had single failure,
while under tho old way we had fre.
quent failures. The foregoing is from
the pen of the successful farmer and
well known agricultural writer, Waldo
F., Brown, who has the following to Say
in a communication to Prairie Farmer:
It is great advantage to prepare the
seed bed for oats with an improved har.
row, for one team will put in as much
land in day as three teams will to
break the land and harrow and roll un.
til 1t is fine. We often have but day
or two of fine weather at q time in
March when the land is dry enough to
work, and when our clay upland gets
thoroughly saturated we often must
wait week Or two before it dries 80 az
to be fit to work. 1t is great advan
tage to adopt q speedy method, for usu.
ally early sown oats yield much more
than those sown late. usually first use
disk harrow and then sow the oats
and cross harrow with an Acme harrow,
which is the best implement to give a
fine, level seed bed that have over
used.
am told that this method Of putting
In oats is now almost universally adopt.
ed, and that whenever one farmer begins
it in neighborhood in few years all
the rest follow this plan: 1t is now uni.
versally acknowledged that shallow
seed bed produces the best wheat, and
wheat on such land endures the winter
better, and this was found ont by OBJ
serving that where the horses turned on
the plowed land and tramped it SO hard
that barely enough loose earth could be
had to cover the seed with the crop
was better than OH other parts Of the
field. The same is true of sweet potatoes
and this fact, which was discovered
from setting plants on hard tramped
land, has led to shallow plowing and
the making of small ridges for the crop,
and the result is a largo increase in
yield and better shaped tubers.
meet occasionally at the institutes a
man acknowledged by his neighbors to
be one of the best corn growers of the
locality, who claims that the same kind
nf n Good hp6 ryiy In host 80
and there is an increasing number of
farmers each year who have found that
shallow cultivation which stirs two
inches Of the surface soil in the cornfield
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 in
the oornfields is yet to be invented, and
when it is we want it made SO that it
will cover these rows of corn and enable
us to stir the soil on strip not less than
ten feet wide at each time through. Any
of the good weeders will do this to per-
fection on some soils and under favor
able conditions, but it is not yet what
we want i'll the large cornfields Of the
west. The reason we want to get over a
wide strip is that the best work is done in
the cornfield SOON after rain, when the
land will crumble at touch and the
weeds will be killed before they see the
light. have no 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 cornfields
In cultivating, and l sec no difficulty in
the way of using the slicing cultivator
in the cultivation Of corn.