This section is from "Scientific American Supplement". Also available from Amazon: Scientific American Reference Book.
The season is now at hand when farmers who have light lands, and who may possibly find themselves short of fodder for next winter feeding, should prepare for a crop of millet. This is a plant that rivals corn for enduring a drought, and for rapid growth. There are three popular varieties now before the public, besides others not yet sufficiently tested for full indorsement - the coarse, light colored millet, with a rough head, Hungarian millet, with a smooth, dark brown head, yielding seeds nearly black, and a newer, light colored, round seeded, and later variety, known as the golden millet.
Hungarian millet has been the popular variety with us for many years, although the light seeded, common millet is but slightly different in appearance or value for cultivation. They grow in a short time, eight weeks being amply sufficient for producing a forage crop, though a couple of weeks more would be required for maturing the seed. Millet should not be sown in early spring, when the weather and ground are both cold. It requires the hot weather of June and July to do well; then it will keep ahead of most weeds, while if sown in April the weeds on foul land would smother it.
Millet needs about two months to grow in, but if sowed late in July it will seem to "hurry up," and make a very respectable showing in less time. We have sown it in August, and obtained a paying crop, but do not recommend it for such late seeding, as there are other plants that will give better satisfaction. Golden millet has been cultivated but a few years in this country, and as yet is but little known, but from a few trials we have been quite favorably impressed with it. It is coarser than the other varieties, but cattle appear to be very fond of it nevertheless. It resembles corn in its growth nearly as much as grass, and, compared with the former, it is fine and soft, and it cures readily, like grass, and may be packed away in hay mows with perfect safety. It is about two weeks later than the other millets, and consequently cannot be grown in quite so short a time, although it may produce as much weight to the acre, in a given period, as either of the other more common varieties. A bushel of seed per acre is not too much for either variety of millet. - N.E. Farmer.
 
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