Cultivating to Save Moisture 151 



The mellower the soil, the lighter should be the 

 work done by the harrow. On most heavy orchard 

 soils, it will be found necessary to use the heavy 

 tools, like the spring-tooth and disc harrows, in the 

 spring, but if the land is properly handled it should 

 be in such condition as to allow the use of a 

 spike -tooth or smoothing harrow during summer. 

 This light summer harrowing should be sufficient to 

 keep down the weeds, and it preserves the soil- 

 mulch in most excellent condition. With such a 

 tool and on land in good tilth, a man can harrow 

 ten or more acres a day. 



Cultivators and conservation of moisture. The ac- 

 tion of cultivators is not materially different from 

 that of the spring -tooth harrow. The size of the 

 teeth should be regulated by the work to be per- 

 formed, an implement with many small teeth being 

 preferable to one with a few large teeth, when the ob- 

 ject is to conserve moisture. It must be borne in 

 mind that in a dry time the less surface exposed the 

 less will be the evaporation. If a large-toothed im- 

 plement is used to destroy grass and weeds, then it 

 should be followed by a smoother to reduce the ridges 

 and prevent loss of moisture. Ridge culture is only 

 allowable when the object is to relieve the soil of 

 moisture on bottom lands where the water comes 

 very near the surface, or for some special crops, 

 where a high degree of warmth is required early in 

 the season. In these cases, it rn^y be necessary to 

 throw up ridges to produce the proper degree of 

 warmth for germination, but even then the ridges 



