CHAPTER XIV. 



TILLAGE THE EARTH MULCH. 



of the most important points in tillage are left 

 for this chapter. The first is tilling to check 

 evaporation. When you put a lot of leaves or 

 some strawy manure or some sawdust or muck 

 around a tree that you have just set out, you call 

 it mulching. You do it to keep the tree roots 

 moist. If they get too dry it will die, hence this precaution. 

 Perhaps in the early summer you hoe around it for a time, and 

 then mulch around before very hot, dry weather comes on. Now, 

 how does this mulch work ? It prevents the air from rapidly ab- 

 sorbing the moisture. It doesn't do it because it cannot get at it 

 much. Now, do you know that you could accomplish the same 

 end, perhaps, just as well if you would take a rake or hoe and keep 

 the surface of the soil about the tree constantly loose ? If you 

 would never forget, but always do this, stirring it, say, two inches 

 deep after every rain, just as soon as it was dry enough, it would 

 practically save the tree just as well as the mulching. I have 

 tried it several times on trees and shrubs, and no matter how dry 

 the season, I can keep them growing just as well any way without 

 the mulch as with it. Mr. J. J. Thomas, than whom we have no 

 higher authority, says there is no better mulch possible for newly 

 set trees than a freshly stirred surface. But now, in the case of 

 trees, it would be less trouble to put some mulch around them 

 and have done with the work once for all, particularly if there 

 were but few. If you had a large number, and the field was in 

 cultivation, the earth mulch might be cheaper. But for our ordi- 

 nary field crops, for corn and potatoes, etc., the earth mulch is 

 the only practical one to use on a large scale. And we may 

 make it about as effective in a dry season as a mulch of straw. 

 Do not believe this ? I assure you it is so. And it has this ad- 

 vantage : A straw mulch in a wet year keeps the ground most too 

 cool and wet sometimes. The earth mulch is safer and better. 



But let us look a little further before going on with this point. 

 Where does the water come from that your crops use during the 

 season ? Some comes directly from the clouds. Now and then 

 there will be, perhaps, weeks that enough comes in this way to 

 supply the crops. But at other times they must get water in 

 some other way or suffer. You say, perhaps, "Why the soil hold^ 

 moisture and gives it up to the crop as long as wanted." This is 

 true and still we need to understand just how it is done in order 



