486 Agricultural Experiment Station, Ithaca, N. Y, 



months owing to the surface drainage of melting snows and 

 heavy rainfalls. To prevent this loss, fall plowing should be 

 extensively practiced, and where the subsoil is very hard and 

 compact the use of the subsoil plow may prove most beneficial. 

 Should the ground break up in clods, then it may be allowed to 

 remain during the winter without harrowing to more thoroughly 

 subject it to the beneficial action of the elements. But should 

 the soil be in good mechanical condition, then some plants should 

 be growing on it during the winter. The importance of keeping 

 growing plants on the soil during the winter can hardly be over- 

 estimated. They serve to bind the soil, to take up the plant food 

 which may be soluble and liable to loss by drainage. If these 

 plants are plowed under in the spring, organic matter is added 

 to the soil. In corn fields, wheat or rye may be drilled in without 

 plowing and it will obtain sufficient growth to act most benefi- 

 cially upon the soil during the winter and it may be plowed under 

 in the spring, having served its purpose as a soil protector. The 

 use of cover crops for orchard lands is fully discussed in Cornell 

 Bulletin 102. 



It should be said, however, that hard land which is bare or 

 devoid of humus is very apt to become puddled or cemented dur- 

 ing the winter if plowed in the fall. In such cases, all that is 

 gained by fall ploughing is more than lost by this running to- 

 gether of the soil. 



On land that has been fall plowed, work can begin in the spring 

 several days earlier than on unplowed land. It should be the 

 practice to stir the surface soil just as early in the spring as 



conditions will permit, that a soil mulch 

 may be formed which will serve to prevent 

 the escape of the water from below. On 

 clay land it is of special importance that 

 work be commenced early, and yet on ac- 

 count of its peculiar nature it is the slowest 

 in di-ying out and the last to be plowed. 

 This delay may mean the difference between 



141.— Clay soil, showing its 



Impermeable character, a succcss and a failure of the crop. Clay 



soils, owing to their fine state of division and 

 their tenaciousness, are but slowly permeated by water (Fig. 141). 



