INTRODUCTION TO NEW EDITION. XIII 



sometimes three years, with red clover. The land is plowed in 

 May or June, and occasionally in July, and is afterwards sown 

 to winter wheat in September. The treatment of the summer- 

 fallow varies in different localities and on different farms. 



Sometimes the land is only plowed once. The clover, or sod, 

 is plowed under deep and well, and the after-treatment con- 

 sists in keeping the surface soil free from weeds, by the fre- 

 quent use of the harrow, roller, cultivator or gang-plow. In 

 other cases, especially on heavy clay land, the first plowing is 

 done early in the spring, and when the sod is sufficiently 

 rotted, the land is cross-plowed, and afterwards made tine and 

 mellow by the use of the roller, harrow, and cultivator. Just 

 before sowing the wheat, many good, old-fashioned farmers, 

 plow the land again. But in this section, a summer-fallow, 

 plowed two or three times during the summer, is becoming 

 more and more rare every year. 



Those farmers who summer-fallow at all, as a rule, plow their 

 land but once, and content themselves with mere surface culti- 

 vation afterwards. It is undoubtedly true, also, that summer 

 fallows of all kinds are by no means as common as formerly. 

 This fact may be considered an argument against the use of 

 summer -fallowing; but it is not conclusive in my mind. Patient 

 waiting is not a characteristic of the age. We are inclined to 

 take risks. We prefer to sow our land to oats, or barley, and 

 run the chance of getting a good wheat crop after it, rather 

 than to spend several months in cleaning and mellowing the 

 land, simply to grow one crop of wheat. 



It has always seemed to me entirely unnecessary to urge 

 farmers not to summer-fallow. We all naturally prefer to see 

 the land occupied by a good paying crop, rather than to spend 

 time, money, and labor, in preparing it to produce a crop twelve 

 or fifteen months afterwards. Yet some of the agricultural edi- 

 tors and many of the agricultural writers, seem to take delight 

 in deriding the old-fashioned summer-fallow. The fact that 

 Lawes and Gilbert in England find that, when land contains 

 considerable nitric acid, the water which percolates through 

 the soil to the underdrains beneath, contains more nitrate of 

 lime when the land is not occupied by a crop, than when the 

 roots of growing plants fill the soil, is deemed positive proof 

 that summer-fallowing is a wasteful practice. 



If we summer-fallowed for a spring crop, as I have some- 

 tunes done, it is quite probable that there would be a loss of 

 nitrogen. But, as I have said before, it is very seldom that any 



