mellow up the soil and to deepen the moisture reservoir. 

 Others, as cultivators, are to tear up and to pulverize the soil to 

 greater or less depths. Cultivators lift and turn the soil. The 

 spring-tooth harrow is really a cultivator. Other tools, as har- 

 rows, prepare the surface of the soil. They make the seed-bed 

 and put on the earth-mulch. The true harrows stir the soil, but 

 do not lift or invert it. 



12. Weeds do not like ivell-tilled la?ids. — The first and greatest 

 value of tillage is to put the soil in such condition that plants can 

 grow, and then to keep it so. Incidentally, it prevents from 

 growing those plants which we do not want, — the weeds. Usu- 

 alh^ the process is reversed : weeds make us till, and we get the 

 other benefits without knowing it. The best tillage prevents 

 weeds rather than kills them. 



13. Sunimer-falloiving is a means of cleaning la7id and of cor- 

 recting mistakes. — It may be necessary to fallow the land in order 

 to clear it of stones, stumps and brush. But after the land is 

 once thoroughl}^ subdued, summer-fallowing is very rarely neces- 

 sary if the land has been well handled. If the land has been 

 plowed when too wet and thereby has become lumpy, if it has 

 been allowed to become foul with weeds, or if it has lost heart by 

 too continuous cropping wath one kind of crop, summer-fallow- 

 ing is a good means of bringing it back into condition. The 

 better the farming, the less the necessity of summer-fallowing. 

 In the old days, the poor tillage tools rendered fallowing more 

 necessary than it is to-da}'. 



Fallowing is tillage; and tillage liberates plant-food. Some of 

 this plant-food may leach away and be lost, although the small 

 rainfall of the summer months, — during which time fallowing is 

 practiced, — makes this loss slight. 



14. The kind of tillage should vary ivith the soil, the time oj 

 year, the kind of crop. — Too many farmers seem to think that til- 

 lage is tillage, no matter how it is performed. The same tool is 

 used for clay or sand or muck, and for fitting the land for wheat 

 or corn or apple trees. A harrow that is best for one field may 

 be worst for the adjoining field. A man would not think of 

 using a buggy for carr3dng grain to market, but he will use one 

 tool for many kinds of work. The work is not only poorly done, 



