Norwich bulletin., 1915-07-31

I work solely with hand hoes. Arc the cabbaSes there better than elsewfere7
 We'll I rather guess not Instead. they arc clearly and enthusiastically less advanced than the rest of the patch. What then7 Are those illinois peo- pie mistaken7 I don't think SO. They're keen chaps and as able to see, the hole in a millStone as am
 Are they ueingf Not on your life. They're just as honest aa you and l, and actuated by a sincere desire to find out the truth and report it no matter what it is. nor whose corns 1t A t''' saaa=4esSsss - ss p-ases.xsx. On ehe other hand, am bind and Ignorant and unreasonable in my de- termination to keep on cultivafing and mulching7
 don't think so.
 But how can we both be -rfght7 -
 We'll, how could both the <niqfrts in the shop-worn old story of the shield be right? One said it was white and, the other said 1t was black, and it wasn't till after they'd shivered their lances and torn their clothes and porostties that they discovered it was both white and blaclz-white on one side and black on the other. There are not merely two sides to the farming proposition, there are about tleven hundred and 'leventy- 'leven sides. And they're not all of them visible to the same eyes from the same angle at the same time. either. There's difference between IT, Ifnois loam and New England gravel to begin with.
 There's a difference between Illinois and New England climate. for another thing.
 There's a difference between Illinois and New England weeds. They have quite different ones to fight grom those , which visit us
 There's difference between corn and some other crops, such as cab bages and cucumbers and potatoes and peas and oats and onions.
 There's most tremendous differ ence in the demands of varying plants as is clearly shown by the difference in their root systems.
 Did you ever see picture of the roots and rootlets of corn hill? Or, better yet. did you ever see the roots themselves, as they appear when care fully washed out of the soil in which they were growing?
 The root system of a. corn-hill of four thrifty stalks reaches to about every inch in a block of soil three 4OCI ana HIS rom within an inch or less of the surface down as deep as the roots can penetrate, or as deep as there Is anything for them to go after.
 Of course, cultivation which blows deep enough or cuts close enough to the hills to destroy any considerable number of these roots weakens the plant by lessening it's feeding capacity.
 That is why shallow cultivation of corn has been recommended for 50 years by corn experts.
 This experiment. to which we are referring proves that, on certain field, in a certain county in Illinois, certain kind of corn has done meas urably better when shallow cultivation was carried to it's very extremest limit.
 Whether.5it was, moro profitable is not shown. It costs more to hand-hoe an acre of<corn land than to horse hoe it. Certainly it costs twice, and I should fancy might cost three times as much. That the slight increase in crop noted would pay for this in creased labor cost is not clear. It might And then again, it mightnt.
 Moreover we are given no inforrna- ton as to how this extremely shall low working of the soil one year, af- fecte6 the crop which followed in TO- tat1on, next year, nor what it's per maneuc influence may have been on the general agricultural value of the land,
 Yet these are bothsfactors demand ing COnSiderat ti0Y7--rez11v- oP ,,,r,,,-. 0,,n