230 MISCELLANEOUS FARM SUBJECTS 



Summer tillage will almost invariably increase the yield of 

 wheat, oats, or barley and will materially reduce the danger of com- 

 plete crop failure due to drought. It may therefore be resorted to 

 as a safeguard or temporary expedient to meet a possible emergency, 

 but it can not be depended upon to produce as profitable spring- 

 sown crops as may be produced by other methods. Very good crops 

 can usually be raised by one plowing and one or two harrowings, as 

 is shown by yields obtained from continuous cropping by ordinary 

 methods. Alternate cropping and summer tillage by methods used 

 in .these tests required on an average two plowings, four diskings, 

 and twelve harrowings. Each farmer must decide for himself 

 whether he can afford to perform this additional amount of labor 

 in order to secure an increase in yield, which if the season proves 

 favorable may be small, and to materially reduce the danger of total 

 failure if the season proves unfavorable. He should, however, re- 

 member that summer tillage will in no way reduce the many dan 

 gers other than drought, such as unseasonable frosts and high winds, 

 to which crops are subject. In fact, these dangers may be materially 

 increased under a system of summer tillage. 



Dry Farming Crops. There is quite as large a range for adap- 

 tation, amelioration and breeding with dry farming crops as with 

 those grown under humid conditions. The necessity for such effort 

 is far more urgent, and the reward quite as promising. Crops must 

 be selected or developed that will fit the environments, and there 

 seems to be quite as large a field for investigation in the improvement 

 and development of crops suited to the various conditions in the 

 dry farming sections as in the improvement of methods of handling 

 the soil. In other words the pedigree of the seed is quite as im- 

 portant as the cultural methods. Neither should be neglected. If 

 the rainy season is short, early maturing crops must be selected, 

 those having a short period of growth. If the rainy season is pre- 

 ceded by a rather long period when the moisture content of the soil 

 is rather low in spite of the means employed to increase it, then 

 crops should be chosen that will make the necessary early growth 

 with a minimum amount of moisture and later be pushed forward 

 to rapid maturity when the rainy season sets in. Still other crops 

 or strains of seed must be selected wherever the moisture content of 

 the soil is ample throughout the growing season. Under such a 

 condition it would be quite useless to grow crops bred for and adapted 

 to a very short season's growth. The dry farmer must not neglect 

 the cultural methods, but he must not be tied to the idea that the 

 way in which the soil is handled is the only essential. The kind 

 of crop and the class or strain of seed used are factors which ulti- 

 mately will have much to do w r ith the result. 



It has been demonstrated by repeated experiments that crops 

 can within certain limits be adapted to new and different environ- 

 ments. Aquatic plants in time have adapted themselves to and 

 become dry land plants. So to, plants that for centuries have grown 

 in conditions of abundance of moisture, have gradually become 

 adapted to conditions where there was very decidedly less moisture. 



