BROOM CORN.
Three varieties of sorghum are important: two as food plants, and the third furnishes the house wife with brooms. Kafir corn feeds stock and poultry in this country: it feeds both man and beast in Africa, India, and China. Sorghum molasses replaces sugar to a considerable extent. In our country to-day, it is a feeble competitor of sugar-cane and beets.
All of these species of sorghum belong to one genus, Andropogon, a member of the great Grass Family upon which the world depends for food. The blossom is a branching panicle at the top of a jointed stalk that grows like maize. There is no ear — the seeds follow the blossoms on the top.
Broom corn seed is planted later than corn in fields within the Corn Belt and farther south. Its culture is like that given to corn, and as the bloom passes the grower watches the clouds anxiously. Dry, clear weather is needed for the harvest. The crop is the "brush," or top, made up of fine, wiry, and very long branches that bear the small seeds. In the fields of standard varieties the harvest involves the "tabling" of the stalks, before the cutting of the heads. The stalks are
partly severed three feet from the ground, and the tops bent diagonally over so that the brush lies across the broken stalks of the neighboring row. The bent stalks form a table on which the heads lie to dry. Each brush has two or three inches of stalk left for a handle, and is in prime condition if cut right after the bloom fades. If the seeds ripen, the straws become brittle' and stiff.
Dwarf varieties are grown for whisk brooms. The stalks are pulled after blooming, and the brushes dried and cut off. Oklahoma and Kansas are large producers of dwarf broom corn.
The special thresher or seed stripper, a kind of comb, removes the seeds from the straw, after which the brushes are finished by being quickly dried in airy, shady sheds, to preserve the green color as much as possible. The brushes are then compressed into zoo to 30o pound bales for ship ment to the broom factories, or to the wholesale market.