8o An American Fruit-Farm 



get the land ready during the summer, say in 

 August, when the water is low, and ditches and 

 wells may be dug most cheaply and effectively. 



Subsoiling is a process of draining: the sub- 

 soil plow following in the furrow of the ordinary 

 plow, breaking through the hard earth to a depth 

 of several inches, making it porous, ventilating it, 

 and enabling plant roots easily to find their way 

 through it. Land which is thus locked at bottom 

 and impervious may well be thus plowed deep be- 

 fore trees are set out, but subsoiling is useless as an 

 attempted corrective of hardpan. Or if the land 

 is a thin, shallow soil resting on strata of rock, sub- 

 soiling is equally impossible and valueless. The 

 best land for fruit is land naturally well drained: 

 land overlying a rocky or hardpan bottom at a 

 depth of from eight to twenty feet. The imper- 

 vious bottom aids in retaining plant-food in the 

 soil. Soil which is sandy or gravelly to a great 

 depth is expensive to keep fertile, — ^the food- 

 supply ever dissipating; or land which overlies 

 hardpan or stratified rock, a few feet below, and 

 sloping sharply, is drained too rapidly, — ^being, in 

 fact, a mere cover for a perpetual underground 

 stream which carries away fertilizer. It is folly 

 to set out an orchard in shallow soil, say of two 

 feet depth, or less, for, later in the life of the 

 orchard, heavy winds are likely to uproot the 

 trees. The roots, in such land, strike down- 

 wards till they reach the rock or hardpan, then 

 spread laterally but have not sufficient overweight 



