TILLAGE FOR MOISTURE 79 



mastered, and methods are therefore strikingly diverse. Tillage 

 prepares the seed bed, facilitates germination and root-extension, 

 and fosters the benign processes of soil warmth and aeration here 

 as elsewhere. It also holds the same relation to soil-moisture here 

 as elsewhere, but its services in this particular are more conspicuous 

 because the need is greater, as intimated in previous chapters. 



The common California conception of the value of tillage 

 naturally seizes upon this aspect of the case and asserts that the 

 chief offices of soil working are first to get as much moisture as 

 possible into the soil and, second, to keep it there. The efficacy of 

 certain ways and times of tillage to assist in the escape of surplus 

 moisture is of course known to those who have this work to do, but 

 the area in which such acts are called for is comparatively small. 

 It is quite important, however, that the vegetable grower should 

 have it in mind and it will be mentioned later. 



TILLAGE TO RECEIVE MOISTURE. 



This involves both time and method. The importance of early 

 work in the garden has been incidentally mentioned and will be 

 farther urged hereafter. With the rainfall-vegetable grower, early 

 plowing of the land, or early digging of the small garden, is the 

 first of a series of timely acts which are neglected at great peril. 



Summer Fallow as Preparation for Vegetable Planting. The 

 best way to be early with one season is to begin in the previous one, 

 if possible. A bare but frequently-stirred summer fallow is the best 

 preparation for a garden. A piece of stubble or new land deeply 

 plowed and subsoiled and left unharrowed in the fall or early winter, 

 cross-plowed in the spring, and then worked with a cultivator once 

 a month during the dry season, is brought to the opening of the 

 rainfall garden season in good condition from at least three points 

 of view: first, it has been cleaned of many weeds; second, it has 

 been improved in tilth and fertility and, third, it has a storage of 

 moisture from the previous season's rainfall. Such a piece of land 

 can be deeply plowed at the opening of the rainy season, and can be 

 at once planted with vegetables for winter use which are hardy in 

 the locality and will carry them along well with its content of stored 

 moisture, even if there be very little rain during the early fall 

 months. Because of its deeply stirred surface, freedom from hard- 

 pan from previous cultivation, and moist subsoil, it is in its best 



