42 TREE PLANTER'S MANUAL. 



THE DRAW-BACK. 



A lack of water is the great draw-back with us. We have not enough 

 rainfall to supply our full needs. We are therefore driven to the necessity 

 of economizing what moisture we have with the most vigorous energy. 

 Plowing up the soil breaks its sodded crust, allowing water to nitrate down- 

 ward to the clay beds and chambers, held there in reserve for use. What 

 a beneficent provision this in the divine economy of nature! 



OUR PRIVILEGED DUTY. 



Rains are fortuitous; we are not yet able to control them. To depend 

 exclusively upon their descent makes our agriculture as uncertain as the 

 winds that so mercilessly beat upon our crops. The business in hand is to 

 economize what we have, to control the water content of the soil. Gen- 

 erally in the spring the soil is well saturated with moisture. 



SOIL-TAPPING. 



Spring plowing taps the soil, verily bleeds it to a dry death. Fall plowing 

 is not attended with much evaporation. The winter snows and winds pack 

 it down to the right condition for plant growth. It must be kept thus 

 packed through the entire growing season. If we keep gouging into it 

 with the shovels of the cultivator, we not only neutralize largely the capil- 

 lary action, but we open innumerable and dangerous ducts into it, pro- 

 ducing rapid evaporation, and soon all our water reserve is lost and our 

 plants die. The trouble is, we stab the sub-soil; we cultivate where the 

 teeth of the cultivator have no business to be. The essential work to do 

 is to expose the least possible amount of soil to the action of the sun and 

 winds. 



SOIL-AERATION. 



But the soil must be stirred just enough to break up the surface crust, 

 formed by deposit of saline particles brought up by capillary action 

 and virtually baked in the heat-ovens of the sun. The thing to do is 

 simply to harrow up this crust and transform it into a fine "dust blanket," 

 flexible enough to let in the air close enough to husband the moisture just 

 under it. An intelligent prairie farmer sensibly says in the Annual of 

 Farmers' Institute, vol. 5, page 96 : 



" It is essential that the air be admitted within the soil to bring with its 

 coming, oxygen and nitrogen, and take in its going the carbon dioxide lib- 

 erated in the soil. This coming and going of the air in the soil may be 

 called soil-breathing. The germinating seeds, growing roots and germs of 

 ferment, germs of nitric acid and free nitrogen fixing germs, all breathe 

 the air, all are essential to soil fertility, and to exclude air would surely 

 cause a poverty of crops." 



It is plain, then, that cultivation must be thin and frequent during the 

 dry season of plant growing. 



THE EVERGREENS. 



Among the evergreens suited for our climate are our native white spruce, 

 red and white cedar, white and red pine, Norway spruce, bull pine. Those 



