Mower County transcript., 1904-04-06
HOW TO DESTROY
OATS SMUT.

HuC one plnC OF IOTmdllu luCO duOuV
forty gallons of water and sprinkle on
forty or fifty bushels of oats.
The following method is the one most
generally used and is simple and mex
pensive.
The formalin can be obtained at any
drug store at from forty to fifty cents
per pint.
The afternoon Oh evening before the
oats are to be sown, put one pint of
this formalin into about q of kerosene
barrel of water; spread forty bushesl of
oats on the barn floor five or six inches
deep. With sprinkling can or broom
sprinkle the water over the oats. The
oats should be shoveled over thorough
ly for ten or fifteen minutes to insure
thorough treatment. They should then
be shoyeled into long pile on one side
of the floor and covered with gunny
sacks or blankets to prevent the form
| alin gas from escaping too rapidly.
The following morning the oats should
again be spread out and shoveled over
until they are dry enough to SOW. Oats
treated in the evening can be soWn the
following day.
Oats thoroughly treated in this way
will generally be free from smut for
two or three years, and will not require
treatment each year.
The oats will not feed so freely owing
to the dampness, so special attention
should be given to the feed, otherwise
there is danger of having thin stand
of oats.
If the oats are not soWn the next day
after treating, they should be spread
out as thin as possible on the floor and
raked over several times in order to let
them dry off without heating OF sprout-
ing. The formalin will soon evaporate
and the oats can be used for feeding in
a few days.
Do not leave in piles covered up with
bags more than Is or .18 hours as there
is danger of injuring the vitality of
the seed.
The hundreds of tests that have been
made by the stations show that the
yield of oats is increased one to five
bushels per acre by this treatment and
sometimes more than this. The aYerags:
loss to Iowa each year is from 7 to
IL per cent, amounting to from one to
two millions of dollars yearly. In some
cases there has been found as high as
3S per cent of smut and frequently as
high as 20 to 25 per cent. The average
annual loss to the man with 80 acres OF
oats is 25O bushels. This loss can be
entirely prevented by the treatment
given above.
How THE OATS BECOME INOCCULAT.
ED AND EFFECTED WITH SMUT.-At
blossoming time the hulls or glume OF
the oats are pushed open and the spores
or seed of the smut floating in the air
fall into the opening and later the hulls
close up hold the spores of the smut
under the hull next to the meat of the
oat kernel. In the spring, when the oats
are sown, the smut spore terminates at
the same time the oat terminates, and
grows, living on the inside of the oat
plant, sapping its strength and growing
up through the stem until the oat heads
out when it changes the oat to smut.
The object of the treatment for smut
is to kill the smut spores lying under
the hull of the oats, so that they will
not grow when the oats germinate.
The damage or loss from oat smut is
greater than is generally supposed
owing to the fact that the smut appears
before the oats are ripe and is blown
on so that it is not very noticeable al
harvest time.
| (CAUTIoN) Do not allow the form
alin can to remain open as the formali1
will soon loose its strength, being very
volatile. For the same reason do no1
put the formaline into the barrel o:
water until the oats are spread on tht
floor and are ready to be treated.
IMPORTANT.-"Lik produces like,
and farmers should separate all ligh'
chaffy oats from their seed and SOW
only kernels that are strong and vigor
Gus. terminating tests will also bt
made. PIG. HOLDEN.
| Iowa State Agricultural College
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