24 The Bulletin. 



elements. A crop or two of cowpeas and, in aggi*avated cases, an 



additional one of rye and vetch mixed with brains and a small amount 



of elbow grease, and southern soils can be made to produce almost any 



crop desired. 



PECAN SOILS. 



Since writing my last pecan bulletin, I have had no reason to 

 modify what I said at that time regarding soils for pecans. There 

 are only two kinds of soils in the south that I have found will not 

 grow pecan trees. The first is one that is too wet, and the second 

 one that has a hard pan. Both of these unfavorable conditions can 

 be corrected, and when this is done the trees will grow all right. The 

 correcting of wet, sour lands for pecan growing has already been dis- 

 cussed at length. As to the hard-pan condition, it is somewhat more 

 difficult to overcome. If it cannot be broken up so that the tree roots 

 can get deep down into the soil, that location had better be abandoned 

 and some other place chosen for the pecan orchard. 



The pecan has the most remarkable development of tap-root of all 

 cultivated trees. The function of a tap-root seems to be to go deep 

 into the soil. From my observations, pecan trees go deeper into the 

 soil than any other cultivated trees. In the first year's growth of the 

 seedling pecan tree it begins at the very outset the development of its 

 enormous tap-root. This goes straight down into the soil three or 

 four times as deep as the top rises above the surface. After trans- 

 planting, the tree begins with its first growth the formation of a new 

 tap-root, and most often several of them. There must be something 

 inherent in the life processes of the tree that so persistently fosters 

 the development of tap-roots in pecans. This is undoubtedly the 

 desire for moisture. Pecan roots normally go down very deeply into 

 the soil after water. Mr. C. A. Reed, pecan specialist of the National 

 Department of Agriculture, says that in the south well diggers regard 

 the pecan tree as an indicator of where undergTound water is to be 

 found. I have observed that pecan trees make their best development 

 where there is nothing to check their downward growth. In farming 

 and trucking, a soil is not considered of much value that has not a 

 hard clay subsoil somewhere within 1 or 2 feet of the surface, because 

 without it fertilizers seem to be leached out below and lost. Pecan 

 trees grow to perfection on loose, bottomless soils that would be con- 

 sidered utterly worthless for farming and trucking purposes. Ferti- 

 lizers and moisture never seem to get beyond their extensive root 

 range. In the protracted drought of the season of 1911, while other 

 trees were withering up and dying, pecan trees made their normal 

 growth, apparently unaffected by the excessive dryness. Some of the 

 finest pecan nuts that T have ever seen were produced on soil so light 



