Agriculture for Beginners - Daniel Harvey Hill (love letters to the dead .TXT) 📗
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The plants use the food for building new tissue, that is, for growth. The water passes out through the leaves into the air. When the summers are dry and hot and there is but little water in the soil, the leaves shrink up. This is simply a method they have of keeping the water from passing too rapidly off into the air. I am sure you have seen the corn blades all shriveled on very hot days. This shrinkage is nature's way of diminishing the current of water that is steadily passing through the plant.
A thrifty farmer will try to keep his soil in such good condition that it will have a supply of water in it for growing crops when dry and hot weather comes. He can do this by deep plowing, by subsoiling, by adding any kind of decaying vegetable matter to the soil, and by growing crops that can be tilled frequently.
The soil is a great storehouse for moisture. After the clouds have emptied their waters into this storehouse, the water of the soil comes to the surface, where it is evaporated into the air. The water comes to the surface in just the same way that oil rises in a lamp-wick. This rising of the water is called capillarity.
Fig. 5. An Enlarged View of a Section of Moist Soil, showing Air Spaces and Soil Particles
It is necessary to understand what is meant by this big word. If into a pan of water you dip a glass tube, the water inside the tube rises above the level of the water in the pan. The smaller the tube the higher will the water rise. The greater rise inside is perhaps due to the fact that the glass attracts the particles of water more than the particles of water attract one another. Now apply this principle to the soil.
Fig. 6. The Right Way To Plow
The soil particles have small spaces between them, and the spaces act just as the tube does. When the water at the surface is carried away by drying winds and warmth, the water deeper in the soil rises through the soil spaces. In this way water is brought from its soil storehouse as plants need it.
Fig. 7. Apparatus for testing the Holding of Water By Different Soils
Of course when the underground water reaches the surface it evaporates. If we want to keep it for our crops, we must prepare a trap to hold it. Nature has shown us how this can be done. Pick up a plank as it lies on the ground. Under the plank the soil is wet, while the soil not covered by the plank is dry. Why? Capillarity brought the water to the surface, and the plank, by keeping away wind and warmth, acted as a trap to hold the moisture. Now of course a farmer cannot set a trap of planks over his fields, but he can make a trap of dry earth, and that will do just as well.
When a crop like corn or cotton or potatoes is cultivated, the fine, loose dirt stirred by the cultivating-plow will make a mulch that serves to keep water in the soil in the same way that the plank kept moisture under it. The mulch also helps to absorb the rains and prevents the water from running off the surface. Frequent cultivation, then, is one of the best possible ways of saving moisture. Hence the farmer who most frequently stirs his soil in the growing season, and especially in seasons of drought, reaps, other things being equal, a more abundant harvest than if tillage were neglected.
EXERCISE
1. Why is the soil wet under a board or under straw?
2. Will a soil that is fine and compact produce better crops than one that is loose and cloddy? Why?
3. Since the water which a plant uses comes through the roots, can the morning dew afford any assistance?
4. Why are weeds objectionable in a growing crop?
5. Why does the farmer cultivate growing corn and cotton?
SECTION IV. HOW THE WATER RISES IN THE SOILFig. 8. Using Lamp-Chimneys
To show the Rise of Water in Soil
When the hot, dry days of summer come, the soil depends upon the subsoil, or undersoil, for the moisture that it must furnish its growing plants. The water was stored in the soil during the fall, winter, and spring months when there was plenty of rain. If you dig down into the soil when everything is dry and hot, you will soon reach a cool, moist undersoil. The moisture increases as you dig deeper into the soil.
Now the roots of plants go down into the soil for this moisture, because they need the water to carry the plant food up into the stems and leaves.
You can see how the water rises in the soil by performing a simple experiment.
EXPERIMENT
Take a lamp-chimney and fill it with fine, dry dirt. The dirt from a road or a field will do. Tie over the smaller end of the lamp-chimney a piece of cloth or a pocket handkerchief, and place this end in a shallow pan of water. If the soil in the lamp-chimney is clay and well packed, the water will quickly rise to the top.
By filling three or four lamp-chimneys with as many different soils, the pupil will see that the water rises more slowly in some than in others.
Now take the water pan away, and the water in the lamp-chimneys will gradually evaporate. Study for a few days the effect of evaporation on the several soils.
SECTION V. DRAINING THE SOILA wise man was once asked, "What is the most valuable improvement ever made in agriculture?" He answered, "Drainage." Often soils unfit for crop-production because they contain too much water are by drainage rendered the most valuable of farming lands.
Drainage benefits land in the following ways:
1. It deepens the subsoil by removing unnecessary water from the spaces between the soil particles. This admits air. Then the oxygen which is in the air, by aiding decay, prepares plant food for vegetation.
2. It makes the surface soil, or topsoil, deeper. It stands to reason that the deeper the soil the more plant food becomes available for plant use.
3. It improves the texture of the soil. Wet soil is sticky. Drainage makes this sticky soil crumble and fall apart.
4. It prevents washing.
5. It increases the porosity of soils and permits roots to go deeper into the soil for food and moisture.
6. It increases the warmth of the soil.
7. It permits earlier working in spring and after rains.
Fig. 9. Laying a Tile Drain
8. It favors the growth of germs which change the unavailable nitrogen of the soil into nitrates; that is, into the form of nitrogen most useful to plants.
9. It enables plants to resist drought better because the roots go into the ground deeper early in the season.
A soil that is hard and wet will not grow good crops. The nitrogen-gathering crops will store the greatest quantity of nitrogen in the soil when the soil is open to the free circulation of the air. These valuable crops cannot do this when the soil is wet and cold.
Sandy soils with sandy subsoils do not often need drainage; such soils are naturally drained. With clay soils it is different. It is very important to remove the stagnant water in them and to let the air in.
When land has been properly drained the other steps in improvement are easily taken. After soil has been dried and mellowed by proper drainage, then commercial fertilizers, barnyard manure, cowpeas, and clover can most readily do their great work of improving the texture of the soil and of making it fitter for plant growth.
Fig. 10. A Tile in Position
Tile Drains. Tile drains are the best and cheapest that can be used. It would not be too strong to say that draining by tiles is the most perfect drainage. Thousands of practical tests in this country have proved the superiority of tile draining for the following reasons:
1. Good tile drains properly laid last for years and do not fill up.
2. They furnish the cheapest possible means of removing too much water from the soil.
3. They are out of reach of all cultivating tools.
4. Surface water in filtering through the tiles leaves its nutritious elements for plant growth.
EXPERIMENTS
To show the Effect of Drainage. Take two tomato cans and fill both with the same kind of soil. Punch several holes in the bottom of one to drain the soil above and to admit air circulation. Leave the other unpunctured. Plant seeds of any kind in both cans and keep in a warm place. Add every third day equal quantities of water. Let seeds grow in both cans and observe the difference in growth for two or three weeks.
To show the Effect of Air in Soils. Take two tomato cans; fill one with soil that is loose and warm, and the other with wet clay or muck from a swampy field. Plant a few seeds of the same kind in each and observe how much better the dry, warm, open soil is for growing farm crops.
SECTION VI. IMPROVING THE SOILWe hear a great deal about the exhaustion or wearing out of the soil. Many uncomfortable people are always declaring that our lands will no longer produce profitable crops, and hence that farming will no longer pay.
Now it is true, unfortunately, that much land has been robbed of its fertility, and, because this is true, we should be most deeply interested in everything that leads to the improvement of our soils.
When our country was first discovered and trees were growing everywhere, we had virgin soils, or new soils that were rich and productive because they were filled with vegetable matter and plant food. There are not many virgin soils now because the trees have been cut from the best lands, and these lands have been farmed so carelessly that the vegetable matter and available plant food have been largely used up. Now that fresh land is scarce it is very necessary to restore fertility to these exhausted lands. What are some of the ways in which this can be done?
Fig. 11. Clover is a Soil-Improver
There are several things to be done in trying to reclaim worn-out land. One of the first of these is to till the land well. Many of you may have heard the story of the dying father who called his sons about him and whispered feebly, "There is great treasure hidden in the garden." The sons could hardly wait to bury their dead father before, thud, thud, thud, their picks were going in the garden. Day after day they dug; they dug deep; they dug wide. Not a foot of the crop-worn garden escaped the probing of the pick as the sons feverishly searched for the expected treasure. But no treasure was found. Their work seemed entirely useless.
Fig. 12. Increasing the Productive Power of the Soil
Second crop of cowpeas on old, abandoned land
"Let us not lose every whit of our labor; let us plant this pick-scarred garden," said the eldest. So the garden was planted. In the fall the hitherto neglected garden yielded a harvest so bountiful, so unexpected, that the meaning of
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