Keowee courier. [volume] (Pickens Court House, S.C.) 1849-current, 1906-01-03
J How He Made Big Corn Crop.

per acre on his entire crop, he has
been requested to give an account Of
bis methods of culture and the fer
tilizer used, which he has done, in
the following letter addressed to the
Daily Item:
T In accordance with your recent
request for an account of the culture
and fertilization of my corn crop, I
beg to say that I have never at
tempted TO write an article for a
newspaper, nor would / now but for
the fact that i have recently received
scores of letters like yours from DIFF
ferent parts of the country, asking
me to "give in full the manner of
planting, fertilizing, gathering-in
fact everything connected with my
crop of corn that would be of inter-
est to my fellow farmers throughout
the State and the Southern States"
AS have not the time nor the in
clination to write 30 many letters, /
will take this method of answering
them through the press.
l will state first, however, that /
had the honor of being delegate to
the National Cotton Growers Con-
vention, held at New Orleans in
January last, and came back home
from that convention morally bound
to reduce my cotton acreage 25 per
cent. And as l had been planting
400 acres of cotton, besides all the
corn and oats that needed, and as
it was then too late to plant large
crop of oats, cut out 100 acres of
my best cotton land and planted it
in corn, in addition to the usual
amount of land already set aside for
corn.
Early in the year / broke up my
corn land deep with two-horse
ploughs, laid it off in five-foot rows
and bedded it out about the middle
of March.
l planted seed that had been
improving for a good many years
bred it up from the big gourd seed
variety crossed with flint corn. It
has an extra large cob, we'll filed
with long grains and have selected
sixty ears of this corn that shelled
outN bushel. Planted the latter
part of March and got good stand,
but crows and birds broke the stand
80 badly that I planted the whole
crop over in the last week in April,
and gots perfect stand, eighteen to
twenty-four inches apart in the drill.
NY fertilizer was 100 pounds
kaiIt, 200 pounds cotton seed meal
and 100 pounds nitrate of soda, max
ing 400 pounds in all per acre.,
put down 100 pounds kainit and
meal mixed at time of planting; 200
pounds more of same mixture at
second ploughing, and 100 pounds
soda at fourth and last ploughing;
cultivated crop altogether with
sweeps, using 16-inch for first, 49,
inch for second and 24-inch for two
last ploughings. Did not put Dixie
or turn ploughs in it after I rolled
the middles in the spring.
We had entirely too much rain all
through July for cotton, but the
continuous rains struck the corn ex-
actly at the right time, 80 much so
that it did not suffer an hour for
rain from the time it was up until it
was fully matured. The yield of
corn averaged fraction Cover 80
bushels per acre on $50 acres that l
worked with contract labor, but I
had 20 acres more worked by share
oroppers that did not do nearly so
well, it being a well-known fact that
negroes cannot grow corn success
fully. l will make more net profit
per acre this year on corn than 1 will
on 12-cent cotton. l have put away
plenty of corn to supply a twenty
horse farm another year, and raise
my own meat, and have four thou
sand $4,000 bushels of corn and
forty thousand (4O,OOO) pounds of
good, sound fodder for r'e.