Thank you for visiting SNEWPapers!
Sign up free
Domestic News
August 17, 1901
Baxter Springs News
Baxter Springs, Cherokee County, Kansas
What is this article about?
Agricultural advice piece condemns ridging corn as harmful to plants, soil, and land, advocating level culture for better moisture, roots, aeration, and yields despite temporary weed appearance. From National Rural.
Clipping
OCR Quality
95%
Excellent
Full Text
LEVEL CULTURE BEST
No Kind of a Season Warrants Ridging of Corn and No Kind of Soil Demands It,
No farm practice is more inimical to intelligent corn culture than that alarmingly common in the corn belt of laying by the corn with large shovels set to throw the earth from between the rows into a ridge centering in the rows. Ridges thus formed increase the exposed surface and hence make possible larger evaporation of moisture. Moreover, they leave the middles hard and compact so that the soil pumps ooze out the water by the ton, and compel the foraging roots of the plants to go straight down for food and moisture, which should be available in the first several inches of soil that has been removed from the middles and thrown about the base of the plants.
Ridging spoils the surface of the ground for pasture and meadow unless it be repeatedly worked. If you should sow clover in the corn and lay the latter by with ridge-forming shovels your clover pasture always would be a series of bumps, which would aggravate the driver of the mowing machine, cause the hay loader trouble and annoy in other ways.
In a rolling country where, strange to say, ridging is commonest, the practice is of greater advantage than in the prairie country, since in the former it furnishes convenient surface avenues for the escape of water, which in a short season transforms them into small ditches and skims off the cream, as it were, of the land and deposits it in the creek or stream, leaving the farmer a veritable new but poor farm.
Level culture is not only easier on the corn, team and workman, but it is decidedly better for the land. It avoids root pruning, aerates the soil and removes weeds. Experiments have shown that it also will give larger yields than ridge culture. Then why ridge your corn?
We know one of the principal reasons why corn growers do it:
Ridging covers up a large number of weeds growing in the hill and thus makes the field appear clean. We are convinced that the weeds if left uncovered cannot do as much injury to the corn plants as the ridges will inflict. As between the two evils choose the lesser.
Don't ridge your corn. Adopt that saner system--level culture. No kind of a season warrants ridging and no kind of soil demands it--science condemns it, good farming opposes it and you ought to quit it.
-National Rural.
No Kind of a Season Warrants Ridging of Corn and No Kind of Soil Demands It,
No farm practice is more inimical to intelligent corn culture than that alarmingly common in the corn belt of laying by the corn with large shovels set to throw the earth from between the rows into a ridge centering in the rows. Ridges thus formed increase the exposed surface and hence make possible larger evaporation of moisture. Moreover, they leave the middles hard and compact so that the soil pumps ooze out the water by the ton, and compel the foraging roots of the plants to go straight down for food and moisture, which should be available in the first several inches of soil that has been removed from the middles and thrown about the base of the plants.
Ridging spoils the surface of the ground for pasture and meadow unless it be repeatedly worked. If you should sow clover in the corn and lay the latter by with ridge-forming shovels your clover pasture always would be a series of bumps, which would aggravate the driver of the mowing machine, cause the hay loader trouble and annoy in other ways.
In a rolling country where, strange to say, ridging is commonest, the practice is of greater advantage than in the prairie country, since in the former it furnishes convenient surface avenues for the escape of water, which in a short season transforms them into small ditches and skims off the cream, as it were, of the land and deposits it in the creek or stream, leaving the farmer a veritable new but poor farm.
Level culture is not only easier on the corn, team and workman, but it is decidedly better for the land. It avoids root pruning, aerates the soil and removes weeds. Experiments have shown that it also will give larger yields than ridge culture. Then why ridge your corn?
We know one of the principal reasons why corn growers do it:
Ridging covers up a large number of weeds growing in the hill and thus makes the field appear clean. We are convinced that the weeds if left uncovered cannot do as much injury to the corn plants as the ridges will inflict. As between the two evils choose the lesser.
Don't ridge your corn. Adopt that saner system--level culture. No kind of a season warrants ridging and no kind of soil demands it--science condemns it, good farming opposes it and you ought to quit it.
-National Rural.
What sub-type of article is it?
Agriculture
What keywords are associated?
Corn Culture
Level Culture
Ridging
Farming Practices
Soil Management
Weed Control
Crop Yields
Domestic News Details
Event Details
Article argues against ridging corn rows in farming, promoting level culture as better for moisture retention, root growth, soil aeration, weed control, and yields. Ridging is criticized for increasing evaporation, compacting soil, spoiling pasture, and causing erosion. It appears clean by covering weeds but harms more than uncovered weeds. Signed -National Rural.