Melissa Michalski, age 12, of Lake Charms, La., for her question:
ARE THERE MANY KINDS OF OATS?
One of the world's most important food crops is oats. It belongs to the same family of plants as wheat, corn, rice, rye and barley. There are nearly 100 different varieties of oats raised today including yellow, white, black and gray oats.
The leading oat growing states and provinces include, in the order of their importance, Minnesota, Alberta, Saskatchewan, South Dakota and North Dakota. Russia is the world's leading oat growing country followed, in order, by the United States, Canada, West Germany and Poland.
The average yield of oats in the United States is about 47 bushels per acre. Scientific methods of cultivation are raising this average. In Belgium, Great Britain, Switzerland and The Netherlands, the average yield is more than 100 bushels per acre.
Oats are best suited to a cool, moist climate. But they are grown throughout the temperate zones of the entire world. Some varieties even have been grown near the Arctic. Circle. Oats are grown in nearly every state of the United States.
Oats are a very nourishing food. They are rich in starch and proteins. Prepared forms include oatmeal and rolled oats. Both dishes contain about 1,850 calories per pound. Oats are therefore an important food for the winter diet.
The most valuable use of oats is as a food for livestock, however. Oats are the best of ail grains for horses. They are equal to corn as a tissue builder and they have fewer calories and more roughage. No other cereal produces straw that makes such good feed and fertilizer.
The time for sowing oats is in the spring, except in regions of mild winters, such as the South. There, oats are sown in the autumn. If the oats are sown in the spring, the ground should be plowed the autumn before. It should also by harrowed soon after the frost is out of the ground. Sowing begins just as soon as the ground is the proper condition.
The oat seeds may be sown in drills (close rows) or scattered over the field.
The oat stalk is from two to four feet long when full grown. It is slender and ends in groups of graceful branches, called spikelets. The grain grows at the end of spikelets. A husk protects each seed.
The spikelets usually spread out from all sides of the stem. Rut in one variety called horsemane oats, or side oats, the spikelets grow all on one side.
It is thought that oats developed from wild grasses and that the grain first grew in Asia. Oats were not widely known in early Christian times. By the 1200s, oats were grown in England and known there as pilcorn.
Oats should not be planted in a low rich soil. Tt is not good to use rich fertilizers because the grain tends to bend down when it grows too thick. Loam and clay soils are best.
The diseases and insect enemies of the other cereals also attack oats. Smut and rust, both of which are parasitic fungi, destroy millions of bushels of oats each year. Some headway against rust is gained by growing varieties which can resist it.