146 Practical Farming 



vegetation on the surface all winter to prevent the leaching 

 away of plant food and the winter washing of a bare soil, 

 and furnishing also vegetable matter to turn under in the 

 spring, we increase the fibrous material in the soil and still 

 further check the tendency to wash. The one-horse plow 

 and the clean and constant cultivation in cotton have been 

 the cause of the bad gulHes in the Southern hills, and the 

 puny attempts to dam back the water have done httle 

 good. So long as the continuous cultivation of the land 

 is practiced and the one-horse plow is the means for break- 

 ing the land for crops, the washing will never be checked, 

 no matter how elaborate the terracing may be made. 



Deep breaking, subsoiling and rotative cropping, with 

 a cover crop always on the land in winter, will do far more 

 to check the washing of the Southern hills than all the 

 terraces that were ever constructed. Then, when the land 

 is in clean crop, the common practice has been not only 

 to break the land on the contour of the hill, but the rows 

 are laid off in the same way, which is all right so far. 

 But the practice followed in the cultivation of the crop has 

 of itself led to a great deal of the washing. Instead of 

 working the soil shallowly after the planting of the crop, 

 and keeping it as level as possible, the practice has been to 

 hill up the soil to the rows of cotton or com, and when the 

 rains descend the furrows thus formed soon get filled. 

 The upper ones overflow and those further down the hill 

 continue to gather head and overflow till a torrent is 

 formed rushing down and a gully starts. If the crops 

 had been worked shallowly and level there would have 

 been no hollows to gather a head of water, but it would 

 have been spread out and largely sunk in the soil, and if 



