FINDING AND MAKING SOIL 205 



your waste brine and anything else that contains salt 

 on your asparagus, or around your quinces and pears. 

 Thorough cultivation will take care of most of the 

 annual weeds and one or two hoeings will do the rest 

 of it. In the fall I leave my last crop of purslane 

 and chickweed to bind the soil through the winter. 

 This is advisable only where your soil slopes so as 

 to wash badly during the thaws and floods and is not 

 advisable anywhere near strawberry beds, for chick- 

 weed, if it ever gets in, will never give up until the 

 strawberries are plowed out. 



Water in the soil is just as important as the soil 

 itself. Every plant consists largely of water; pota- 

 toes are three-fourths water, and beets and carrots 

 are nearly ninety per cent liquid. For eveiy pound 

 of dry matter in your wheat field you must have 

 nearly four hundred pounds of water, and three hun- 

 dred for every pound of solid matter in your clover 

 field. Trees contain, as a rule, about one-third their 

 weight of water, although this varies somewhat with 

 the season and with the variety of tree. Professor 

 Bailey estimates that fifty bushels of corn per acre, 

 in order to mature will require one million and a half 

 pounds of water; and two hundred bushels of pota- 

 toes will require in growth one and a quarter million 

 pounds of water. 



Now the point for the country home-maker is to 

 find out just about how much water his soil needs; 

 the superfluous must surely be drawn away, but 

 enough must be retained. A thorough system of 



