Wheat field

“ In the privileged regions not every district is adapted to this incomparable crop: wheat needs the mild temperature and fertile soil of the plains, not the harsh climate and dry slopes of the mountains. Let us consider France in particular. Its plains produce excellent wheat, but not enough to feed the entire population; therefore in the hilly and cooler regions, where this cereal cannot be raised, recourse is had in the first place to rye, which yields a bread that is compact, brown, and heavy, but on the whole preferable to any other except, of course, wheat. ”

“ The quality and properties of wheat depend more upon the environment in which it is grown than upon the species to which it belongs. There is perhaps no other field crop in which the environment, namely, condition of the soil, temperature, precipitation, etc., makes a greater difference than in wheat. ”

“ It is cheering in late autumn and early winter when no other young growth is to be seen on the farm, suddenly to find the field covered with the fresh shoots of the wheat in regular lines, and to notice how, after its first appearance, it makes little further upright growth for a time, but spreads laterally over the ground as the roots extend downwards. ”

“ They use corn and rye and oats, too, but more wheat than all the others put together, The Chinese and Japanese and Filipinos and many other peoples eat more rice. But they are beginning to buy our white flour, too.
Where does all this wheat come from? Just farms. Little farms and big farms, in a great many of our states, grow wheat. These wheat fields cover fifty million acres of our land. Some wheat fields are so big that a hundred men go into them at once. They ride on sulky plows drawn by horses, or they use steam plows. ”

“ In the Southern States, planters are in the habit of permitting their wheat to remain too long in the field after it is cradled, and in small shocks. Good barns are too scarce in all the planting States, and in some others. ”

“ Scarce any Land is so unfit, and ill prepar’d, for Wheat, as that where the natural Grass [94] abounds. Most other sorts of Weeds may be dealt withal when they come among drill’d Wheat; but ’tis impossible to extract Grass from the Rows: Therefore let that be kill’d before the Wheat be planted.
[94] One Bunch of natural Grass, transplanted by the Plough into a treble Row of Wheat, will destroy almost a whole Yard of it.
The Six-feet Ridges being Eleven, on Sixty-six Feet, which is an Acre’s Breadth, ought to be made Lengthways of the Field, if there be no Impediment against it ”

“ The wheat will not come up until late in the autumn—the plants will be weak and thin on the ground; and if they escape the winter they will not get a fair hold of the ground until April or May. You know the result. The straw is full of sap, and is almost sure to rust; the grain shrinks up, and we harvest the crop, not because it is worth the labor, but because we cannot cut the wheat with a machine on the better parts of the field without cutting these poor spots also. An acre or two of poor spots pull down the average yield of the field below the average of Mr. ”

“ Here and there we passed large wheat fields. Several years before the war, owing to the heavy English import duties on tobacco, the people had begun to raise wheat on a more extensive scale. Here, as in other parts of America, the cornfields are seeded to wheat without removing the stalks. The weevil is bad, especially if the grain lies long in the straw. After floating off the light seed the good, heavy grain is broadcasted, mixed with shell lime. Between Fredericksburg and Richmond we noticed a good many swampy spots, which might easily be drained. ”

“ For the past twenty years, leading men of science, who, alive to the importance of increasing the world's supply of wheat; have given close attention to statistics which seemed to indicate that the yield per acre, of the wheat fields in all countries, is steadily decreasing. ”

“ And yet some of the best and most extensive wheat-fields of the country are within those circuits, while a vast area is left annually to grow brush and weeds, and to remain of comparatively little value, which should otherwise contribute to the harvest of thousands of bushels of the finest grain. ”

“ But the development of wheat cultivation in the countries mentioned has not been so great since 1890, prices have improved, and wheat culture in the United States has revived, the area devoted to its cultivation having increased fifty-six and six-tenths per cent. in the decade 1890-1900. In the regions where the winters are rigorous, especially where the snowfall is not heavy enough to protect vegetation, as in the Red River Valley, or where the rainfall may be inadequate in the autumn, the wheat crop is sown in the spring. ”

“ The true Cause why Wheat is not (especially on any strong Soil) to be sown immediately after Wheat, is, That the first Wheat standing almost a Year on the Ground, by which it must grow harder; and Wheat Seed-time being soon after Harvest in England, there is not Space of Time to till the Land so much as a second Crop of Wheat requires.
Tho’ sometimes in poorer Land, that is lighter, Wheat has succeeded Wheat with tolerable Success ”

“ A Farmer had just sown a field of wheat, and was keeping a careful watch over it, for numbers of Rooks and starlings kept continually settling on it and eating up the grain. ”

“ Except in regions of large-scale production, wheat is usually grown in rotation with other crops; for a nurse crop for grass seeding; and as a cover crop to prevent soil erosion and leaching. Some is sold, some kept for seed, and a percentage of the total production much larger than in areas of specialization is consumed on the farm and grown for such purpose. Such farmers, while growing some wheat, may even find the balance of their interest on the consumer's side. ”

“ The truth of the matter respecting soils for wheat, is, that any soil good for corn, potatoes, or a garden, may, with proper tillage, produce the best of wheat. Experience in England, and in all the old countries on the continent of Europe, shows us that old land may be made to yield as large crops of wheat as the virgin soil of the New World. The production of wheat at suitable intervals, for a century, on the same land, need not lessen its power to produce good wheat in large quantities. ”

“ This region is watered by the south fork of the Platte and its affluents, and, though subject to the grasshopper pest, it produces wheat of the finest quality, the yield varying according to the mode of cultivation from 18 to 30 bushels per acre. The necessity for irrigation, however, will always bar the way to an indefinite extension of the area of arable farms. ”

“ No one has ever found wild wheat in any country; it would be as strange as a wild cabbage or turnip. But the practical question is, How can wheat be most surely and profitably grown? The first requisite is a suit [Pg 424] able soil. A clay or limestone soil is usually considered best, as there is much lime in wheat-bran. Such soil is better than light sand, or some of the poorer loams. But the large yields of wheat on the Western prairies, and on the rich alluvial soils of California river-bottoms, shows that the best of wheat may grow on other than clay lands. ”

“ Wheat is a plant demanding a rich soil, worked deep, and not too wet: these three things will produce a good crop on any land. We say to all farmers, raise wheat on any land that you can afford to prepare. First, if your land has not a dry subsoil, underdrain it thoroughly: water standing in the soil, and becoming cold or stagnant, is very injurious to wheat. Drainage is hardly more essential to any other crop than this. Next, plow deep. ”

“ There are lumber industries carried on here, and extensive flour mills, and while the climate is in every respect all that could be desired for the growth of both winter and summer wheat, the fertility of the soil is such as to make it incomparable. The entire country and its citizens are continually busy sowing and harvesting their wheat, storing it in large warehouses, whence it is shipped to the Pacific Coast markets and from there to Asiatic and European countries. ”

“ Where it is a rich earth, those plants should be grown which require a greater proportion of nutriment, coleworts for instance, wheat, winter-wheat, and flax. The result, then, will be, that a light soil will be given to barley—the root of that grain standing in need of less nutriment—while a more dense, though easily-worked soil, will be assigned to wheat. In humid localities spelt should be sown in preference to wheat; but where the soil is of moderate temperature, either wheat or barley may be grown. Declivities produce a stronger growth of wheat, but in smaller quantities. ”

“ A standard wheat should be hardy, strong in the straw; not easy to shell and waste, prolific, thin in the bran, white in flour, and the flour rich in starch and gluten. The earliness or lateness of a variety affects its liability to disease.
Much may be done by every farmer to secure a variety suited to his soil from his own fields. Let a watchful eye observe every remarkable head of wheat—a very early one, a very long head, any which have an unusual sized grain, or is distinguished for any excellent property. ”

“ Yet father raised large crops of corn, potatoes, oats and wheat. Wheat grew very large but sometimes ran too much to straw; some seasons, rust would strike it and then the grain would shrink, but as that and gets older, and the more the clay is worked up with the soil, the better wheat it raises. In my opinion it will be as good wheat land as the oak openings or prairies of the West for all time to come. ”

“ The wheat is sown in rows with wide spaces between them, which are utilised for beans and other crops, and no sooner is it removed than daikon (Raphanus sativus) , cucumbers, or some other vegetable, takes its place, as the land under careful tillage and copious manuring bears two, and even three, crops, in the year. The soil is trenched for wheat as for all crops except rice, not a weed is to be seen, and the whole country looks like a well-kept garden. ”

“ The third reason why we can expect better results in that north country is because the staff at the Experimental Farm have been steadily carrying on experiments with a view to obtaining a variety of wheat that will ripen a few days earlier, and if they can shorten the term for the ripening of wheat by four or five days or a week, it will bring into the certain line, as to wheat growing, an enormous area of land. ”

“ Economic necessity may also soon increase the cultivation of this valuable plant as an alternate crop on, and restorative for, the exhausted soil of many districts where wheat has been grown on wheat since, one might almost say, time immemorial. ”

“ The need of suitable soil and proper cultivation has also been emphasised. These conditions are to a great extent under the control of the farmer, whose fault it is if they are not efficiently arranged. But there are other factors affecting the yield of wheat which cannot be controlled, such for instance as sunshine and rainfall. ”

“ It is true, that climate has much to do in condensing, and of course, improving the value of wheat. It is a general principle, that the warmer and drier the climate where it is grown, the more valuable the grain. Wheat from the south of Europe, is worth more than when grown in the north; and that from any portion of the United States, owing to our superior dryness of climate, is more nutritive than what is produced in Great Britain. This difference is increased from 8 to 14 per cent. in favor of the American. Gluten varies in wheat from 8 to 35 per cent. ”

“ The well-known division of wheats into spring and winter wheats has reference to their resistance to cold, but also to ability to mature their seed in a single, short growing season. The grasses from which the cereals are derived are perennials while the cultivated cereals are, on the whole, annuals. The ideal climate for wheat is one with a mild winter, a cool and moist spring conducive to abundant development of the vegetative part of the plant, followed by a warm, dry summer for rapid ripening of the grain. ”

“ And yet wheat maintains its prominence on the heavier soils where a bare fallow is still found the most perfect and economical preparation for that crop, and in the eastern, south midland, and northern counties, where a dry climate and somewhat thin soil is less favourable to stock husbandry and grass. ”

“ In addition to their large wheat crops, abundance of barley and rye is grown, and nowhere is the soil found so uniformly fertile as through this vast stretch of country; and nowhere on earth, it is certain, can wheat be raised more profitably. ”

“ Wheat lands ought to be so farmed as to grow better from year to year; certainly, they ought to hold their own. Lands may be kept in heart by the adoption of a rotation suited to each particular soil; or, if frequent wheat crops are raised, by fallows or manuring. It is a fact that in this neighborhood farms in the hands of careful men are yielding better crops of wheat every year; while multitudes of farmers think themselves fortunate in twelve or fifteen bushels to the acre, there is another class who expect twenty-five or thirty bushels, and in good seasons get it. ”

“ These lands represent soil of about the lightest texture upon which wheat can be economically produced under the climatic conditions which there prevail. They contain from eighteen to twenty-five per cent of clay, and are much more retentive of moisture than the best tobacco lands. This type is about the limit of profitable wheat production. These soils will maintain about twelve per cent of water during the dry season. Garden truck is so late in maturing on these lands that there is often a glut in the market when the crop matures, and the crops often do not pay the cost of transportation. ”