CAMPBELL'S SOIL CULTURE MANUAL 51 



up to a very recent date. All he considered in getting 

 ready to plow, was to get his other work out of the way, 

 then go at it and rip it up. 



Many farmers and experimenters have endeavored 

 under these rules to ascertain the most desirable depth 

 of plowing for best results, and after trying one piece, 

 say, three inches, another five, and another seven inches 

 deep, for three or five years, they have found themselves 

 all at sea. One year the deep plowing gave best results, 

 possibly the next year it gave the poorest; while the me- 

 dium or shallow came in ahead, and all because the 

 farmer had no conception whatever of the true principles 

 of developing or promoting available fertility. His plan 

 of procedure was a gamble, and left him entirely at the 

 mercy of kind Providence in the doling out of rain and 

 sunshine. If the rains came at the proper time and in 

 the proper quantity, interspersed with no long, dry pe- 

 riods, the game was his; but if the reverse was true, then 

 his deep plowing that did so well the previous year, gave 

 a light crop, or nothing at all. 



Had this one question alone in Soil Culture been fully 

 understood twenty years ago, the central west would 

 have never felt the pangs of adversity during the panic 

 of the early nineties, nor would hundreds of eastern wid- 

 ows, orphans, ministers, school teachers, and savings 

 banks lost millions of dollars in western mortgages. 



FALL PLOWING OLD LAND. 



After discussing the pros and cons of spring plowing, 

 it would seem tha.t we had exhausted the subject. Not 

 so, in the least. One of the most important questions 

 we have not yet touched, and that is, what may be done 

 to very materially increase the chances of a big crop of 

 wheat following wheat? 



