SUB-IRRIGATION AND SUBSOILING. 291 



culty has been that when the moisture was applied 

 directly on the plants, the result was rot or mildew, 

 lettuce being attacked by fungus severely in some in- 

 stances, which is believed to be due to the frequent 

 application of water to the foliage. 



Subsoiling. The greatest step in modern agri- 

 cultural advancement, especially in the arid regions of 

 the west, where the soil is of a tenacious hardpan 

 character, is subsoiling. Every thoughtful farmer has 

 known for years that if he had a plow that would stir 

 the under soil from eighteen inches to two feet deep it 

 would be the most desirable tool on the farm. But the 

 trouble has been that no such tool could be found that 

 could be used in hard subsoil with any reasonable 

 amount of power. 



Recently a number of subsoil plows have been in- 

 vented which are simple and inexpensive, and peculiarly 

 adapted to run deep in the hardest subsoil with a mod- 

 erate amount of power. In reasonably hard subsoil two 

 good horses have run a subsoiler fourteen inches below 

 the bottom of the furrow of a common stirring plow. 

 Allowing six inches as the depth which stirring plows 

 run, this makes twenty inches from the surface that is 

 broken up and made mellow by the subsoiler. 



This would permit the heaviest rains to quickly go 

 down from the surface, and to be retained far enough below 

 to avoid being evaporated soon by the hot sun, and 

 would be exactly in the right place for the growing 

 crops. Besides, the next time the same ground was sub- 

 soiled it would be comparatively an easy job to go from 

 four to six inches deeper, making two feet or more of 

 mellow soil, which would hold an immense amount of 

 water, so that during the rainiest seasons the water 

 would not run off into the rivers. In describing his ex- 

 perience with a subsoiler in Allen county, Kansar, 

 Clarence J. Norton wrote : 



