54 agriculture: of maine. 



requires comfort. If you give your cow water in the shape of 

 ice blocks, hay in the form of powder, and corn on the cob 

 roasted hot, these would not be comfortable to her. Besides the 

 elements of fertility, humus and moisture, the plant demands 

 good texture (that is, physical condition) a regulated moisture 

 supply, warmth, aeration and nitrification. These demands are 

 primal and must be met before its demands for food. Texture 

 I shall discuss under tillage, also moisture, merely stopping 

 here to say that plants much oftener suffer for lack of a plentiful 

 supply of moisture than they do for lack of food. The plant 

 requires from three hundred to seven hundred pounds of water 

 to produce one pound of dry product (as of wheat, potato starch, 

 etc.). 



Keep these thoughts in mind and we will now proceed to 

 speak of soil, temperature and aeration as they are intimately 

 associated. Next to the conservation of moisture, the first aim 

 of the farmer in spring should be to get his soil warm. Air and 

 light rain-fall do this. If his soil is solid or too moist, this pro- 

 cess is very slow. Under-draining will take care of the chilly 

 surplus moisture and wise tilling will do the rest. All these 

 points under the head of "comfort" are so closely related to that 

 of tillage that we can take them up together. 



First, the plow. Rid yourself of the old idea that turning the 

 soil up-side-down is a necessary beginning. It is often the worst 

 possible procedure. In the case of grass or grain where the 

 upper three or four inches of soil have been almost exhausted by 

 the previous crop, inversion will bring up more fertility from 

 lower in the soil, but in the case of inter-tilled crops like corn 

 and potatoes, the surface soil is the richer and by plowing it 

 under you have reduced your immediate fertility because their 

 roots have fed deeply. But do not understand me to advocate 

 that even sward ground should be inverted as it is usually done. 

 The first business of the plow is pulverization ; to stir and mix 

 as a cook does. If you merely turn over an unbroken block of 

 turf the end has not been gained. It was a clod before and it 

 still remains a clod. The best process in plowing sod land is to 

 begin with some sharp instrument, that will cut the turf into 

 small pieces before it is plowed. I believe that a cutaway har- 

 row used a few hours on sward before plowing is equal to three 

 times that amount of tilling after plowing. I will tell you why 

 a little later. 



