86 THE AMERICAN FARMER 



TILLAGE. 



TILLAGE has been defined as the art or practice of preparing land for seed, and keeping 

 it in a state favorable for the growth of crops. The object of tillage is denned by 

 another to be that of extirpating from the soil the growths that we do not want, and 

 putting it in the best possible condition for the growths that we do want. The means employed 

 and the nature of conducting the proper tillage of the soil, together with the benefits to be 

 derived thereby, are among the most important considerations in agriculture, since tillage has 

 relation not only to the mechanical condition of the soil, but to its moisture, warmth, aeration, 

 fertilization, and the many benefits derived from the mixing of different elements of the soil, 

 and setting free those mineral constituents of plant-food that are locked up in all soils ; hence, 

 to a certain extent, judicious tillage is equivalent to the application of fertilizers to the land, 

 and many writers have placed so much importance upon it as to assert that if lands were allowed 

 to lie fallow every other season, producing only once in two years, manure would never be 

 required to produce good crops, and no deterioration of the soil would resttlt. On the other 

 side of the question, there are those who take the opposite extreme view of the subject, and 

 claim that tillage has a tendency to make land sterile by the exposure of its elements to the 

 air, thus permitting the fertilizing properties contained in the soil to escape. Either extreme 

 has its objections, and the medium position, sometimes denominated &quot;the golden mean,&quot; is, in 

 regard to this, as in most subjects, the most desirable course to pursue. By following the 

 fallow method, the farmer would require twice the area of land that he now uses in order to 

 produce the same amount in crops, while that portion of his land which produced the previous 

 season was lying idle; besides, we very much doubt whether, even with this rest of alternate 

 seasons, most soils would not suffer a gradual deterioration when entirely un supplied with 

 manure. The other theory above mentioned sets at naught all the experience of the past 

 with its important teachings, and gives but a partial view of the subject. There are many 

 good reasons for believing that too much plowing, as well as too deep plowing, is injurious to 

 many lands, and has a tendency to make them sterile; the former, by continuous exposure of 

 the fertilizing matter which the soil contains to the air, involving a waste of these elements, 

 :and also increasing the porous condition of such soils, while too deep plowing throws up often 

 .& gravelly or sandy subsoil, and buries the rich humus of the surface beneath, where it is 

 beyond the reach of the roots of the plants, and consequently is lost to them; but, as a general 

 jrule, we believe the loss of plant-food occasioned by this exposure to the air and sun to be 

 \very slight, and that the fertilizing properties of the soils are greatly increased by cultivation. 

 As almost all good is liable to be perverted to a wrong or injudicious use, so the good results 

 of tillage may, in some cases, be perverted by the farmer plowing his fields too much, but we 

 believe such cases are rare, and are greatly outnumbered by those where the soil is not 

 plowed enough to produce the successful results that might be obtained by a thorough and 

 .judicious tillage adapted to the character and needs of the soil and crops to be produced. 

 Because an overdose of the proper kind of medicine might prove injurious, and perhaps fatal 

 in some cases, is no reason why all medicine should be discarded and denounced as positively 

 injurious; but such a course would be quite as reasonable as the assertions of those who claim 

 tillage to T?e injurious to lands because it is sometimes practiced to excess. Success in 

 agriculture requires intelligent thought and action as well as every other department of 

 business, and the results of ignorance and carelessness are fully as disastrous here as every 

 where else. All soils contain the mineral elements of plant- food in abundance, while the crops 

 produced require but a small amount ; hence, but little of the mineral substance of the soil is 

 extracted by the growing crops, yet, small as that amount may be, and abundant as this element 

 may be in the^soil, it is almost wholly locked up, as it were, beyond the reach of plants, or 

 rather, is not In the condition to be assimilated by them, but requires the agency of the air, 

 sunshine, vdew, .and rain, and the various chemical changes that are constantly being produced, 



