The Savannah morning news., 1902-03-10
THE FARM AND THE GARDEN.
MATTERS OF INTEREST TO HOUSE
WIFE AND AGRICULTURIsT.
Notes on the Planting and CuItiva-
ton of COrn-'rO Assist the Fruit
ing of TomatOes-SOme sheep
sense-Fighting Bugs and Blight.


ton of COrn-rO Assist the Fruit
ing of TOmatOes-SOme sheep
sense-Fighting Bugs and Blight.
1t may be set down as a proposition
easily substantiated by a careful test
that any acre of land that produces
only ten bushels of corn under a hasty,
slipshod system of cultivation can be
made to produce twenty or even TWEEN
ty-five bushels under a painstaking
system where all the demands of the
crop are fully met. 1t is just the diff
ference that exists between the system
so long practiced and styled the ex-
tensive and the system now known as
the intensive.
The old system, requiring no nice
ties as to the preparation and fertiliz-
ing and cultivating of the soil and JUS
tifying the most rapid work possible
demand the civilizations of five (per-
haps only four acres) of land to make
fifty bushels of corn.
The new or intensive system demands
a just regard for every detail that goes
crop every year. One or at most two
acres is to be made to produce the fifty
bushels of corn that required five acres
under the rapid, careless, extensive sys-
TEN where little or no regard was paid
to the quality of the seed or to the
proper preparation of the soil.
New land rich in humus and abund-
antly supplied with all the elements of
plant food requires very little in the
way of preparation and cultivating to
make most excellent crops. but after
thirty or forty years of continuous Gull
tivation that land will require consid-
erably more in the way of preparation
and cultivation and several other de-
ans TO enable it to yield profitable
crops.
Inc old system enforced the practice
in corn growing of having rows five
to six feet; some gave a distance of
seven feet. The hills were three feet
apart in the rows and only one stalk
was allowed to the hill. With rows
six feet apart and a stalk every three
feet, there would be less than $500
stalks on an acre. Some of these stalks
are nearly always abortive and produce
nothing. By the end of the season it
might be there were not more than
1000 stalks with ears of varying sizes.
No wonder that the yield of corn was
found when it came to be shelled and
weighed up to be anywhere from eight
cen down to eight bushels on land, too,
that should and would produce easily
twenty-five or more bushels if treated
intensively.
OF course, such mode of cropping
was easy upon the land. The smaller
the crop the less exhaustion of the
plant food in it. But that is not the
idea involved in successful farming.
The proper one is to make the biggest
crop possible every time. A crop is
grown and then restore to the soil as
much as possible what has been taken
from 1T by the big crop. The old sys-
tenn with wide rows for corn called for
half crop of peas to be made by SOW
ing the seeds at the last
cultivating of the corn. This was done
chiefly with the idea of making fall
pasture for the cattle. In a way this
was good, not proving hard on the
land, but it preCluded any hope of
making the land produce its maxi
mum crop of corn.
1t would be impossible to make a
maximum crop of corn on any soil
with 1000 or even 1900 stalks of corn.
Unless we had a variety that had the
fixed habit of setting to fair-sized
ears to the stalk it would be impos-
sible, and that variety we have not
seen yet. though occasional stalks may
do IL.
From long practical experience in
growing corn in a small way we do
not hesitate to express the conviction
that twenty acres viii yield its best,
produce its maximum number of
bushels of corn with less than 5000
stalks. We have plenty of land in
the South where 10000 stalks would be
much more likely to produce that max
imum crop than 5000. We have fire.
quently, in a small way, planted va
rieties like the Blounts Prolific and
the Golden Dent in rows 21a and even
2 feet apart and stalks every IL to Is
inches apart in the row and every
stalk. allowing for all infertile ones,
averaged more than one good roasting
ear
The secret of big crop lies in re-
gard to these details-early plant
ing, soil nicely prepared with
harrow and roller; selected seeds
dropped as they are shelled
from the ear, using especially
ear; rapid cultivation with sweep and
harrow between the time when the
corn is six inches high and four feet
then letting it alone. There must be
plenty of mineral food and not too
much nitrogen-using no unfermented
stable manure.
This piece of advice might properly
be urged upon every Georgia farmer;
prepare your corn land better and
double the number of your stalks"
More of this at another time.
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