Rural Heritage April/May 2026

rest of the work should be sufficient to leave a well compacted seedbed below with a layer of loose, well pulverized soil on top. Listing. West of the Missouri River and in the South much corn land is not plowed at all but prepared for planting by listing. A lister is, in effect, a double moldboard plow which opens up a furrow by throwing the soil out on both sides.The furrows are made where the rows are to run and the soil left unstirred between them. The corn is then drilled in the furrows with a corn drill; or the listing and planting may be done at once with a combined lister and drill. This is a quick, inexpensive method of planting but one adapted only to deep, rich, loose, well-drained soils. The heavy clay soils of much of the East are not suited to this practice. In the West, listed corn withstands the drought better than that planted on the surface, and the plants are not so easily blown down. Planting. Small corn fields are generally planted by hand with one- or two-row drills. Check-row planters are used on level land and in large fields; this is the principal method in the Corn Belt. Drilling is usually confined to new lands, relatively free of weeds, or to level, poorly-drained lands where one way cultivation promotes surface drainage. The advantage of check-row planting is that it permits cultivating the corn both ways and controlling weeds more easily. On sod land, or where weeds do not bother, drilled corn sometimes yields a little better than that planted in hills since the plants are not so crowded. Furrow openers consisting of two disks attached to the runners of an ordinary planter are sometimes used to open up furrows in ground that has been plowed and thoroughly prepared. The chief disadvantage here seems to be that weed seeds that have been buried by plowing are thus exposed and given another chance to compete with the corn planted at the bottom of the furrow with them. Furrow openers are used chiefly in the Middle West on deep, level, well-drained soils where water will not stand long in the furrows.

When to plant. Corn planting begins in the Gulf States about March and ends in Minnesota and North Dakota about June 15. The table from the 1910 Yearbook of the U. S. Department of Agriculture shows the average time of planting corn in different parts of the United States. In any region, midseason planting is usually safer than either extremely early or

April/May 2026

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