No, 6 . DEPARTMENl' OF AGRICULTURE. 'r29 



that the soil il the row under the plant could be shaken up. The 

 method is slow and laborious. One man can cultivate only two and 

 a half acres a day. But the work is rightly done, and potatoes are 

 peculiprly responsive to right treatment. It is the soil in the row 

 that interests the potato-grower. It should be loose naturally, if 

 only such land were retentive of moisture. But if it were, it is not 

 found on half the farms that should produce some potatoes. Deal- 

 ing with land that compacts in heavy spring rains after the planting, 

 we learn to make it loose in the row just as late in the period of 

 crop growth as we dare. That time is when the plants are a few 

 inches high. It is safe to go further and to say that if unusual 

 weather conditions delay this work, and if the ground in the row is 

 found very compact when the vines are even one foot high, it is better 

 to sacrifice some root growth and make the soil loose enough for 

 development of tubers Ihan it is (o go ahead without chance of 

 crop. In such ? case some crop may be gotten by throwing up loose 

 soil in a ridge so that the potatoes may grow in it, but that calls for 

 root-pruning anyway. However, it is an unfortunate condition of 

 things that justifies such heroic treatment, and indicates failure to 

 provide humus for the soil before planting. The only safe course 

 is to make close land friable by drainage and by plowing down 

 vegetable matter, and then give all deep and close tillage before the 

 plants are many inches higli. 



The use of a single-shovel plow is a matter of arithmetic. If in 

 the hands of a man who will use it faithfully and rightlv it will do 

 suflTiciently better work than a more modern and rapid cultivator to 

 pay, use it. Some growers find that it will; others think otherwise. 

 If the soil is loose anyway, or if the workman is unwilling to hold 

 the plow steady with point under the row, a wheel-cultivator is to be 

 prefered. 



Soil Moisture. — Professor King, in his valued book entitled 'The 

 Soil," says: "After the plant food has been prepared in the soil or 

 in the air, it is useless until endowed with the possibilities of move- 

 ment toward and through the living tissue. But water, through the 

 action of capillarity and osmotic pressure, is the medium of trans- 

 port by which the ash ingredients and the nitrogen of the soil are 

 moved to the roots of plants, by which they are drifted into the sun- 

 shine of the laboratories in green leaves and bark, and from w'hich 

 they are again taken to their filial place in the structure of the plant. 

 Nor is this all, for w^ater is itself a food substance used in large quan 

 titles by all phints of whatever sort. By its evaporation from the 

 foliage of plants, it not only holds the temperature down within the 

 normal range of the vital process there going on, but, because of this 

 lowering of the temperature, it also hastens the osmotic flow^ of sap 

 toward the leaves. The amount of water demanded by crops under 

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