432 IRRIGATION FARMING. 



some instances, which is believed to be due to the fre- 

 quent application of water to the foliage. 



Subsoiling. — The greatest step in modem agricul- 

 tural advancement, especially in the arid regions of the 

 west, where the soil is of a tenacious hard-pan charac- 

 ter, is subsoiling. Every thoughtful farmer has known 

 for years that if he had a plow that would stir the 

 under soil from eighteen inches to two feet deep it 

 would be the most desirable tool on the farm. But the 

 trouble has been that no such tool could be found that 

 could be used in hard subsoil with any reasonable 

 amount of power. 



Recently a number of subsoil plows have been in- 

 vented which are simple and inexpensive, and pecul- 

 iarly adapted to run deep in the hardest subsoil with 

 a moderate amount of power. In reasonably hard 

 subsoil two good horses have run a subsoiler fourteen 

 inches below the bottom of the furrow of a common 

 stirring plow. Allowing six inches as the depth which 

 stirring plows run, this makes twenty inches from the 

 surface that is broken up and made mellow by the sub- 

 soiler. 



This would permit the heaviest rains to quickly go 

 down from the surface, and to be retained far enough 

 below to avoid being evaporated soon by the hot sun, 

 and would be exadlly in the right place for the grow- 

 ing crops. Besides, the next time the same ground 

 was subsoiled it would be comparatively an easy job to 

 go from four to six inches deeper, making two feet or 

 more of mellow soil, which would hold an immense 

 amount of water, so that during the rainiest seasons the 

 water would not run off into the rivers. In describing 



