136 Agricultural Department. [Bulletin 121 



other crops. If no stable manure is at hand, the field may be pre- 

 pared by shallow plowing or disking early in the spring and given a 

 light seeding of oats, barley, or emmer. This crop should be plowed 

 under rather shallow for green manure, about the last of May, and the 

 ground subsurface-packed if possible, or at least well tilled with a 

 harrow, disk, or Acme harrow, and reseeded with cow-peas, planted in 

 close drills or sown broadcast, at the rate of four to six pecks per 

 acre. The cow-peas may be cut for hay if they make a rank growth, 

 or, better, the crop should be plowed under before it becomes too rank 

 and mature, and the land immediately reseeded to oats, which should 

 be left as a cover crop during the winter. This land may now be in 

 a fair condition to grow a crop of corn or seed down to grass, or the 

 green manuring may be repeated again the next season, as the judg- 

 ment of the farmer may direct. 



For badly washed areas in which the top soil has all been carried 

 away and the surface has been left rough and broken, as shown in 

 plates IV, V, and VI, little can be done. 



After a few years the soil of such areas will become weathered and 

 more fertile, when, by scattering grass seeds, they may be turned into 

 pastures. 



SANDED AREAS. The sanded lands are the most extensive and per- 

 haps the hardest to reclaim. Some of the land replanted last season 

 was covered with a light coat of sand. Where the layer of sand was 

 not so thick but that the lister placed the corn in fertile soil beneath 

 the sand a good crop was secured. The cultivation during the season 

 mixed the sand with the good soil, and little trouble is likely to be 

 caused by the sand where the depth of the deposit did not exceed two 

 or three inches. Deep plowing on such fields will more thoroughly 

 mix the sand with the soil and give a more uniform texture and bet- 

 ter tilth. 



The problem of how to get rid of the sand is a difficult one on 

 those fields in which the covering is six inches to several feet in depth. 

 The sand was often left more or less in drifts by the water, and during 

 the summer the conditions have been made much worse by the winds. 

 When the sand is not more than six or eight inches deep, it may be 

 possible to turn it under and bring up the good soil by plowing very 

 deep. With a strong sixteen- or eighteen-inch plow, four to six 

 horses ought to turn a furrow ten to twelve inches deep. If a plow 

 could be constructed with a larger, longer mold-board than the ordi- 

 nary plow, capable of elevating the earth twelve to eighteen inches 

 high, it might be used to deepen the furrow of the ordinary plow. It 

 would be possible also to construct a gang so that one plow, with a high 

 mold-board, set at a lower level, will follow the other plow in the same 



