10 MELON CULTURE 



now under consideration. So it is generally a waste 

 of time and material to plant the seeds before the 

 soil is ready to receive them. 



It is a custom with many farmers, especially in 

 the corn belt of the middle West, to begin planting 

 their corn at a certain day of a certain month, re- 

 gardless of the fact that the season may be ten days 

 or two weeks later some years than others. As a 

 result, the farmer is often obliged to replant his 

 corn on account, as he claims, of poor seed ; but 

 by using the same kind of seed for the second plant- 

 ing, a good stand is generally secured, because, in 

 the meantime, the temperature, both of the soil and 

 air, has been raised to the point which the corn 

 requires for germination and rapid growth. Melon 

 seeds require fully as high soil temperature for 

 germination as does corn ; in fact, they are much 

 alike in this respect. 



Tile Drainage Helps to Warm Up the Soil. — 

 There are large areas of the better class of melon 

 soils in the United States which do not need artifi- 

 cial drainage because both the soil and subsoil are 

 of a porous nature and the water level is so far be- 

 low the surface that it does not interfere with the 

 warming-up process but rather accelerates it. In 

 these soils the capillary action is almost perfect, 

 and so it does not matter much how dry the season 

 is, the roots of the plants will always find moisture 

 close at hand. In many sections, however, where 

 melons are grown, a clayey subsoil underlies the 

 looser surface soil, and this has a tendency to hold 

 the free water and to keep the surface cool. 



Tile drainage under such conditions will assist 

 very much in lowering the water level, and so allow- 



