The Problem of Impoverished Lands. Ill 



removing tlie free water ; it tends to make dry soils moist by deep- 

 ening the reservoir and fining the particles of soil. 



23. What tillage tools are for. — Some tools, as plows, are to mel- 

 low 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 har- 

 row is really a cultivator. Other tools, as harrows, prepare the 

 surface of tlie 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. 



24. Weeds do not persist in vjell-tilled lands. — 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 

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

 Usually, 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. 



25. Summer-fallovnng is a means of cleaning land and of cor- 

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

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

 thoroughly subdued, summer-fallowing is very rarely necessary 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 with one kind of crop, summer-fallowing 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-day. 



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

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

 fall of the summer months, — during which time fallowing is prac- 

 ticed, — makes this loss slight. 



26. TJie kind of tillage should vary loith the soil., the time of 

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

 age 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 



