162 RECLAIMING ALKALI LANDS 



Cropping with Alkali-resistant Crops. Allowing land 

 to remain uncropped promotes accumulation of alkali at 

 the surface. It is desirable, therefore, to maintain some 

 kind of plant growth on land that is being reclaimed even 

 though the plant is not the most desirable. Any plant 

 growth is better than none. In soils that are so highly 

 alkaline that no ordinary crops will grow, certain salt 

 weeds will thrive. It is much better to have them grow- 

 ing than for the land to be bare. When these weeds 

 cover the land the temptation is to burn them, but such 

 a practice leaves the alkali absorbed by the plant on the 

 top of the land with the ash. Some alkali-resistant plants 

 take up large quantities of salts, which might be perma- 

 nently removed from the land if the weeds were harvested 

 and hauled off rather than being burned where they grew. 



In Chapters VI and XIV there is a full discussion of 

 the crops that do well on alkali land. From these lists, 

 crops may be selected for use during the various stages 

 of reclamation. 



Drainage. The only permanent way to reclaim alkali 

 land is to remove the excessive salt. This can best be 

 accomplished by some system of drainage, the various 

 types of which are described in Chapter XIII. It may be 

 said, therefore, that alkali reclamation and drainage are 

 almost synonymous terms. Of course drainage is not 

 equally effective under all conditions. Heavy, compact 

 soils containing large quantities of black alkali respond 

 slowly to drainage, whereas open soils which may contain 

 large quantities of sulphates and chlorides may have 

 these salts effectively washed out in a short time. 



A good example of the rate of removal of salts is had in 

 the Swan Tract (3) near Salt Lake City. Work was begun 

 in 1902 on this forty-acre farm by the U. S. Department 



