Seeding.—While the grains of rye are smaller than those of wheat, the amount of seed used per acre is about the same. In the rye districts of eastern New York it is customary to sow seven to eight pecks of seed per acre, placing the seed one to two and one-half inches deep, depending on the soil. On the poorer soils, and with early seeding, some persons recommend less seed. It can be sown safely earlier than wheat, for it rarely shows any tendency to "shoot" the culms in the fall ; it is well known that when this occurs the plant will not survive the winter. In the latitude of Albany, New York, it is sometimes sown as early as the last week in August, while, on the other hand, sowing is some times deferred so late that it barely germinates before freezing weather. When rye is sown early it sometimes gives a large amount of fall pasturage and an excellent crop of grain the following sum mer. Early sowing is very desirable on poor soils, in order that the crop may get well established before winter sets in.
Place in the rotation. —When rye is grown, it generally fills the place in the rotation which would otherwise be taken by wheat. There is certainly no crop better adapted for seeding down with grass. When both are grown, there is a popular idea that a good "catch" of clover is more easily secured with rye than with wheat.
Varieties. —Unlike the other cereals, rye has developed very few varieties, possibly because it cross-fertilizes freely. Yet corn, which cross-fer tilizes with perfect freedom and is indeed almost self-sterile, has developed, nevertheless, a very large number of varieties and types. More probably, this lack of varieties in rye arises from the fact that it has less innate tendency toward variation, i. e., it is not a plastic form.
There is a spring and a winter form of rye, the latter being raised almost entirely in America. New York state growers talk of "White" rye and "Common" rye, and a "Mammoth White Winter" has figured in seedsmen's catalogues, but the dis tinction is not well marked. The grain has not enough commercial importance to attract much attention in the way of selection and improvement by plant-breeders. A number of wheat x rye hybrids have been made, but they seem to have had no especial value.
Harvesting and handling.
Owing to the fact that the culms of rye are so long and slender, a heavy crop is nearly always more or less lodged and tangled, and its harvesting is attended with special difficulties. It should be cut and bound as is wheat. When it is sown on fertile soil and grows thick and stout and seven feet tall, it will severely tax even if it does not go entirely beyond the capacity of the ordinary grain binder. The binder is not especially constructed
for that kind of work, and the elevators will clog and the bundles be tied together. Still, if the machine has a rather long table and the straw is dry, it will usually be possible to handle it by using skill and patience and cutting on only two or three sides of the field. This condition obtains only when rye is sown on soils good enough to grow heavy crops of wheat. Such rye is still often cut with a self-rake reaper and bound and shocked by hand. Four active men, accustomed to the work, will bind rye by hand as rapidly as a reaper will cut it. This makes expensive harvesting, but it is sometimes the only way.
Rye grain must be thoroughly dry if it is to be stored in large bulk, as it seems to become musty more readily than other grains. If straw is to sell well, it must be threshed without breaking or tangling and then rebound into bundles before baling. This was done by flailing long after that implement had disappeared for other uses. It is now handled by a special type of threshing ma chine known as a "beater." This has a cylinder about six feet in length run at a very high speed, and armed with only slight corrugations instead of the usual teeth. The bundles are unbound and fed through this, lying parallel to the axis of the cyl inder instead of endwise as is the usual way. In the old style of machines the straw is discharged on a table in shape so that one or two men can rebind it with bands of straw caught up from the bundle. In more modern machines, the binding is done with twine by a modified form of the ordinary binder. The straw is baled in the old type of open topped box-press, being packed in bundle by bun dle and tramped down. This is peculiarly hard, exhausting work, but it seems to be the only acceptable method of baling rye-straw. The bales weigh 200 to 250 pounds each. A hay car will hold about ten tons of baled straw.
Long, clean, bright straw will usually sell at prices approximating that of good timothy hay. The straw must be bright if it is to bring a good price. Straw grown on hilltops is generally very much brighter (sometimes almost white) than that grown in the alluvial valleys below. Straw grown on black soils in seasons of abundant rainfall is often very much discolored and of low value. The straw will also be brighter in color and will weigh better if cut a few days before complete maturity. Heavy rains after it has once dried seem to diminish its weight by washing out soluble matter.