. The fertile lands of Colorado and northern New Mexico .. . Grains in the San Luis Valley Wheat, oats, barley, rye—the bread-making and stock-feeding smallgrains—grow in the San Luis Valley in crops which, instead of diminishingwith years of crop rotation, continually increase. The soil, being new andrich and volcanic, is full of the mineral salts—potash, phosphorus, silica andlime—which the small grains demand. The rotation with peas and the feedingof stock on the fields keep up all this fertility. Fields of wheat in the SanLuis Valley produced forty bushels to the acre in 1911 for the third
. The fertile lands of Colorado and northern New Mexico .. . Grains in the San Luis Valley Wheat, oats, barley, rye—the bread-making and stock-feeding smallgrains—grow in the San Luis Valley in crops which, instead of diminishingwith years of crop rotation, continually increase. The soil, being new andrich and volcanic, is full of the mineral salts—potash, phosphorus, silica andlime—which the small grains demand. The rotation with peas and the feedingof stock on the fields keep up all this fertility. Fields of wheat in the SanLuis Valley produced forty bushels to the acre in 1911 for the third successivetime, following two years in peas. Oats have gone as high as 110 bushels tothe acre, and crops of eighty or ninety bushels are not even unusual. Small grain growing in the San Luis Valley is a remarkably easy , the grain is drilled after the plow, the same tractor hauling theplows, harrows and drills. Sub-irrigation is so simple that one man oftentends an entire section through the whole irrigation season. In late August. A Great Field of Wheat in the San Luis Valley 46 THE FERTILE LANDS OF COLORADO or September the grain is ready to cut—and then it can stand in the shockall winter without injury. The threshing season in the San Luis Valley isnot completed until just before it is time to begin to plow again. In the open, dry winters grain stands in the shock without injury, andthreshed grain is left in great piles of sacks weeks and even months whilethe owner leisurely hauls it to the mill and elevator. The wheat and oatsraised in the valley are very heavy. Sixty-four pound wheat and forty-fourpound oats are not at all unusual. In most seasons the straw in the San Luis Valley is entirely free fromrust, and makes a very valuable feed after the grain has been threshed. Thisis especially true of oats, which ripen from the tops down, so that they canbe cut, well ripened and filled while the straw is still green. Barley, both the bearded and the
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Keywords: ., bookauthordenveran, bookcentury1900, bookdecade1910, bookyear1912
