144 One Thousand Questions in Agriculture 



Presumably your apricot tree is suffering from too much standing 

 water during the dormant season, or from a lack of water during the 

 dry season. The remedy would be to correct moisture conditions, 

 either by underdrainage for winter excess or by irrigation for summer 

 deficiency. When a tree gets into a position such as you describe, it 

 should be cut back freely and irrigation supplied, if the soil is dry, in 

 the house that the roots may be able to restore themselves and pro- 

 mote a new growth in the top. 



Dry Plowing for Soil and Weed Growth. 



Is there any scientific reason to support the belief that it is injurious 

 to the soil to dry-plozv it for seeding to grain this fall and winter? 

 Will dry-plowing nozv cause a worse growth of filth after the rains than 

 the customary fallowing in the spring? Should the stubble be burned, at* 

 plowed under? 



The points against dry-plowing to which you allude may arise 

 from two claims or beliefs: first, that turning up land to the sun has 

 a tendency to "burn out the humus"; second, that dry-plowing may 

 leave the land so rough and cloddy that a small rainfall is currently 

 lost by evaporation and leaves less moisture available for a crop than 

 if it is plowed in the usual way after the rains. The first claim is 

 probably largely fanciful, so far as an upturning in the reduced sun- 

 shine of the autumn goes. Whatever there may be in it would occur 

 in vastly increased degree in a properly worked summer-fallow, and 

 even that is negligible, because of the greater advantage which the 

 summer-fallow yields. There may be cases in which one will get less 

 growth on dry-plowing than on winter plowing, if the land is rough and 

 the rain scant, and yet dry-plowing before the rains is a foundation 

 for moisture reception and retention — if the land is not only plowed, 

 but is also harrowed or otherwise worked down out of its large cloddy 

 condition. When that is done, dry-plowing may be a great help to- 

 ward early sowing and large growth afterward. As for weeds, dry- 

 plowing may help their starting, but that is an advantage and not 

 otherwise, because they can be destroyed by cultivation before sowing. 

 If the land is full of weed seed, the best thing to do is to start it and 

 kill it. The trouble with dry-plowing probably arises, not from the 

 plowing, but from lack of work enough between the plowing and the 

 sowing. Stubble should often be burned: it depends upon the soil and 

 the rainfall. On a heavy soil with a good rainfall, plowing-in stubble 

 is an addition to the humus of the soil, because conditions favor its 

 reduction to that form, and there is moisture enough to accomplish 

 that and promote also a satisfactory growth of the new crop. 



Treatment of Dry- Plowed Land. 



We are plowing a piece of light sandy mesa land, dry, zvhich has 

 considerable tarweed and other zvecds growing before plowing. Which 

 zvould be best, to leave the land as it is until the rains come and then 

 harrow, or harrow now? Would the land left without harrowing gather 



