144 The Principles of Fruit-growing. 



little water could get into the land; the dish -pan 

 was shallow, and the early rains made mud -puddles 

 or passed off over the surface. Upon such lands, 

 deep plowing is necessary, in order to break up the 

 hard-pan and to increase the storage capacity of 

 the soil. If the land is open and leachy, shallow 

 plowing may be necessary, else the soil may be loos- 

 ened too much. And the water -storage capacity of 

 inost soils may be increased by putting humus or 

 decaying organic matter into them. It will thus 

 be seen that the methods of conserving or saving 

 moisture must be worked out or rather thought 

 out by each farmer for his own farm. 



The water of rains and snows is held upon the 

 surface for the time, and allowed to percolate into 

 the soil, if the land is rough and open from recent 

 plowing, if there is a cover of herbage upon the 

 land, or if the surface is soft and mellow. Fall 

 plowing may be advisable in order to catch the 

 water of the inactive season, and also to expose 

 hard soils to weathering, and it may hasten the 

 work of spring. But clay lands with little humus 

 in them may puddle or cement if fall -plowed, and 

 if ban-owed and fitted in the fall ; and in the 

 south all rolling lands are exposed to serious gully- 

 ing by fall plowing. As a general thing, it is not 

 advisable to plow fruit plantations in the fall, how- 

 ever, not only because it may too greatly expose the 

 roots to the weather, but because it prevents the 

 ameliorating of such lands by the use of some in- 

 cidental or catch crop which may be sown after the 



