CROPS, ROTATION 5

Summerfallow Substitutes

A digest of bulletins published by the Dominion Department of Agriculture, the University of
Saskatchewan College of Agriculture, and other publications.

For further information on this subject write to your nearest Agricultural College or
Experimental Farm. A list of these is given in Farm News Sheet No. 46.

ISSUED BY

EATON’S FARM NEWS SERVICE
WINNIPEG, CANADA

OATS IN THREE-ROW GROUPS
While it is a well-known and unquestioned fact that the summerfallow in most dis-

tricts on the prairie is absolutely necessary to profitable production, yet it has decided
disadvantages as well.

The chief disadvantages of the summerfallow are:

1. The excessive cultivation destroys the fibre in the soil, and often so finely pulverizes
it that it blows or drifts badly.

2. There is danger of making too much plant food soluble so that it is washed away,
thus lowering the fertility of the soil.

3. The crop following summerfallow often grows too rank and lodges (falls down), or
is so late in maturing that it is in danger of frost damage or rust.

4. Nocrop is produced while the land is being summerfallowed; it brings in no money.

5. The cost of the necessary cultivation to keep down weeds.

These disadvantages have led agricultural institutions and farmers to seek substi-
tutes for the bare fallow which have most of its advantages and as few as possible of its
disadvantages. Intertilled crops were the logical ones to look to as the most promising
of fallow substitutes, and up to 1920 these crops had been mainly corn, potatoes and
roots. About this time, sunflowers came into general use for silage, and also the idea of
intertilled grain crops sown in rows. All these intertilled crops have certain advantages
over bare fallow which make them worthy of consideration.

The greatest of these advantages is the fact that revenue, in the form of a cash or
feed crop, is received from the land in place of unrepaid expense. Another great advan-
tage is that the stubble of the intertilled crop makes the soil less liable to drift.

In choosing a crop to be used as a fallow substitute, the farmer should consider the
following points: The adaptability of the crop to the district in which it is to be grown,
its effect on the following grain crop, the ease with which it can be kept free from weeds,
the probable value of the crop, and the ease with which it can be grown and harvested.

POTATOES AS A FALLOW SUBSTITUTE
Wheat following potatoes will yield almost as well as after fallow, but the yield of
potatoes on stubble is fairly low. This, together with the cost of labor for hoeing, spray-
ing and harvesting, and the poor prices usually obtained, makes this crop a rather un-
profitable fallow substitute.

CORN AS A FALLOW SUBSTITUTE
The yield of wheat on corn ground is often higher than on summerfallow. On the
Dominion Experimental Station at Scott, Sask., the average yield (for four years) of
wheat per acre following summerfallow was 25.2 bushels. When following ae. bon