IMS. 



GENESEE FARMER. 



191 



nor pasture, nor soiling, nor 1o sell in market, 

 plow them in, and sow more seed still farther to 

 enrich your land. Vegetable Vitality, con- 

 stantly adding weight and substance to the sum 

 total of organized matter on your plantations, is 

 the great and mysterious power, which God has 

 provided for industrious, reasoning man to work 

 with, and supply his ever increasing numbers 

 with an abundance of food and clothing. Veg^ 

 ©table life, to be useful in the highest degree to 

 our race, must be active in the highest degree — 

 not dormant most of the year, and only half I'e- 

 veloped when cultivated plants are pretending 

 to grow. Our excellent friend "S. W," is right 

 in liis hit in the last Farmer, at "'the hereditary 

 errors of fiarmers" in regard to having plowed 

 fields lie long in naked fallows. This system 

 •of protracted summer fallows has, in peculiar 

 •cases, some advantages. These we have not 

 room to specify ; nor need we, for the readers 

 of this Journal generally understand this branch 

 ■of our subject. 



Augusta, Ga., July, 1848. 



Subsoil Plowing. 



By John Mallory, of Yates County. 



Plowing is one of the most important branches 

 of agriculture — necessary even to its existence. 

 The improvement of practical agriculture, is in 

 proportion to the improvement made in the art 

 of plowing. The principles which chemistry 

 has revealed may be made abortive — their re- 

 sults defective — by improper plowing. 



The object to be obtained from plowing is three 

 fold : 1st, to pulverize the soil ; 2d, to expose 

 a great depth of soil to the action of the atmos- 

 phere ; 3d, to hold the many fertilizing sub- 

 stances brought down by rain and snow, and 

 absorbed by the soil. 



It becomes necessary to pulverise the soil, so 

 ihat the roots of plants may extend in all direc- 

 tions, freely and to a great distance. The at- 

 mosphere coming in contact with deep and svell 

 pulverized earth, imparts heat and moisture, and, 

 acting upon the soil, assists in liberating its salts 

 and in bringing it into that condition which is 

 best fitted for the growth of crops. 



A small portion of water, during rains more 

 or less heavy, sinks into the soil when shallow 

 plowed ; such soil is sooner afTected by the 

 drouth, and is dry at a greater depth than deep 

 earths, as may be shown by an examination 

 of shallow and deep plowing in a time of 

 -drouth. Common plowing docs not reach suf- 

 ficiently deep to accomplish all that is desired ; 

 but deep plowing and its good results are effected 

 by following the common plow with the subsoil 

 plow. It simply loosens the subsoil, and leaves 

 it in that state that roots can enter it, that sir 

 •can permeate it, and water be absorbed by it. 



A subsequent plowing, with the common plow, 

 can then easily intermix the surface and subsoil. 

 Plowing may thus be effected sixteen and twenty 

 inches deep. 



I have found from frequent examination of the 

 roots of the corn, wheat and oats, during the 

 last four or five years, that they generally in- 

 cline to grow downwards, some of the roots 

 even straight down until they reach the subsoil, 

 then after penetrating an eighth or a fourth of 

 an inch^ turn horizontally. 1 traced the root of 

 a wheat plant which had extended sixteen inches 

 nearly perpendicular, in less than three months 

 after it had been sowed, on ground previously 

 subsoiled. It is interesting to lake the spade 

 and examine the roots of crops, at any stage of 

 their growth, in order to compare the effects of 

 common or shallow with those of subsoil plowing. 

 To see tne roots of corn pushing boldly down- 

 wards eighteen inches in search of food, eight 

 inches of which had never been penetrated ex- 

 cept by the noble oak and hickory, and occasion- 

 ally by the searching taproot of clover, as I have 

 witnessed this past summer, affords pleasure as 

 well as instruction to the farmer, who takes 

 pride in showing fat swine or stall fed oxen. 



I subsoiled three fourths of an acre through 

 the middle of an eight acre lot, in June, 1846, 

 for wheat. The field was plowed but once, and 

 cultivated several times previous to sowing the 

 wheat. I am not able to give the result accu- 

 rately, in consequence of cutting the grain with 

 a reaper, by which I was unable to keep the 

 wheat separate. The difference was quite per- 

 ceptible atthetime of harvesting, it stood thicker 

 on the ground, and the berry was of a better 

 quality than the adjoining on ground not sub- 

 soiled. 



In May last I subsoiled one and a half acres 

 of corn, in a field containing six acres. It had 

 been a ti.mothy meadow for four years. The 

 soil was clay loam, subsoil a tenacious clay; a 

 part of the subsoiled ground \Vas a swale pre- 

 viously ditched, a part was a ridge, the balance 

 a wet swale, with a compact, impervious subsoil. 

 Twenty loads of unfermented manure was ap- 

 plied to the acre. It was plowed in May five 

 inches deep, and subsoiled nine inches more. 



I saw no difference in the corn until August, 

 which was then very perceptible during the 

 drouth of that month. The corn upon the sub- 

 soiled part had retained all its beautiful freshness, 

 bearing a healthy perpendicular tassel, and hav- 

 ing the appearance through the day of having 

 been refreshed with a sb.ower of rain the pre- 

 vious evening. That on the unsubsoiled parts, 

 yielded to the drouth, the tassels drooped, and 

 the leaves became dry and rolled. After an ex- 

 amination of the soil and subsoil about this time 

 with the spade, the difference in the parts became 

 no longer a mystery. 



The earth was moist on the subsoiled portion, 



