182 Our Farming. 



I have sometimes wondered, that crops could do so well in 

 spite of the most outrageous treatment they sometimes get. The 

 damage to a crop from injured roots, however, is largely owing to 

 the kind of weather that follows, and the fertility of soil. The 

 better the soil, and more favorable the season, the more they are 

 able to repair damages. 



Now, how nicely this lays the foundation for considering the 

 question of level culture as against hilling up. How can one hill 

 up or use shovel plow without injuring the roots ? Piling some 

 fresh earth under and around the plants will do no harm. It 

 makes a nice mulch. But you take it off from roots between rows, 

 or even tear them off to get the earth. This is where the damage 

 comes in. It is not " sensible " culture. Again, you cannot have 

 hills without valleys. With a field well ridged up, if it is not per- 

 fectly level, what a nice system of little ditches 3^ouhave got to 

 carry the water off without having it soak down during a hard 

 summer shower ! Or, perhaps, it runs off of hills and collects in 

 depressions in your potato field, making the dry dryer, and the wet 

 too wet. Would it not do much more good to soak straight down, 

 as a rule ? Will not level culture catch a rain and hold it better ? 

 Also, when rain water flows off on the surface it takes quite a lit- 

 tle ammonia with it, fertilizer brought from the air, that went up 

 from someone's manure heaps, perhaps. If the water soaks down 

 your crop gets this. It is worth catching. In some sections the 

 habit of hilling up might have come from raising potatoes on a 

 soil that was not well drained. It had better be continued on such 

 land, planting rather shallow. But it is poor farming, and one 

 never can do his best in this way. Perhaps the use of the plow 

 largely as a cultivator at first had something to do with it, and 

 the ease with which -earth could be thrown over weeds. I read 

 once in an old English book that there was a scientific reason for 

 hilling ; that more potatoes would set where earth was banked up 

 against the plants ; that there would be two stories of setting, so to 

 speak. Still, careful experiments have shown that deep planting 

 and level culture will bring the larger crop, particularly in a dry 

 year. If you want more potatoes to set, plant more seed. Nearly 

 always too many set as it is. By level culture one not only saves 

 rain water from running off, but he can make use of the earth 

 mulch to check evaporation far better. Less surface is exposed 

 to the air and more of it can be stirred. After a ridge is once 

 formed you cannot stir the sides and top much, and evaporation 

 must go on faster from them than from a level stirred surface. 

 The objections urged against this practice are that the potatoes 

 are harder to dig and are greened by exposure to sun more. As 

 one writer put it lately, " It is easier to level a mound than exca- 

 vate a hole." Well this may be true, but he is making too strong 

 a case against level culture. But, first, I want to say that in prac- 

 tice the tubers do not grow out and get greened in level culture 

 such as we give. I have grown thousands and thousands of 



