i88 An American Fruit-Farm 



not realize that farming is behind time. Food 

 must be kept cheap enough for every human being 

 to have enough. Not necessarily fewer autos and 

 victrolas and moving pictures, but more nitrogen 

 for farm use. 



Who said ''hardpan"? Did you discover, 

 before you bought your land, whether it rests on 

 hardpan and how far it is to the hardpan? You 

 may be buying a tight, shallow dish; a hardpan 

 basin covered with a few feet of earth in which 

 water collects and drowns the roots of orchard and 

 vineyard. A grapevine or a tree spreads as much 

 root below as foliage above ground. The vine 

 will shoot forth innumerable roots down into the 

 earth, some to the distance of twenty feet. If your 

 soil is shallow and rests on hardpan, it will flood 

 and drown at bottom and bake at top, unless you 

 keep the pores and capillaries open and also get rid 

 of the water. By piercing the hard layer which 

 forms the "pan*' you may possibly reach coarse 

 gravel and so drain your land, or the dip of the 

 **pan" itself may give ample drainage. Commonly 

 the strata beneath dip or incline and the super- 

 fluous water runs down hill and away. If you 

 expect to raise fruit, or indeed any field-crop, you 

 must get rid of the water. Moisture in the earth 

 is like oil that climbs up the lamp-wick and feeds 

 the flame; moisture rises by capillary attraction 

 in the earth and helps dissolve whatsoever it finds 

 into available plant-food; it feeds the flame of life 

 in the plant. If your land is hard, thin, poor, wet, 



