740 MASS. BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



SUBSOIL PLOUGHING AND THOROUGH 

 DRAINING. 



BY B. V. FRENCH. 



A complete adaptation of the soil to terra-culture is the first 

 consideration which should occupy the cultivator. The depths 

 to which many of the roots of cereal grains, grasses, tapped 

 rooted vegetables, vines, shrubs, and trees descend, is much 

 greater than is generally imagined ; no fixed point has been 

 agreed upon with regard to their descent. 



To form some estimation of the great depth to which roots 

 of vegetables descend, the required plants should be planted on 

 a line, in a soil prepared for the purpose, and when fully grown 

 a trench should be opened on the side of the line of vegetables, 

 to the depth of four or five feet, and by applying a stream of 

 water from a garden engine on the side of the trench, the roots 

 may be laid bare, and with a microscope, the small roots (which 

 would not be visible to the naked eye) can be readily seen. 



The writer, to secure a glacis, composed of fine black loam 

 and sand, planted the Lucerne clover. This was done in 

 June. In October, a root was pulled up which measured thirty 

 inches in length, and much of it, no doubt, was left in the 

 ground, the soil being adapted to the growth of its deep tap 

 roots. For twenty years that clover has flourished, and has 

 been mowed for soiling cattle three and four times a year. This 

 clover was planted in 1824, and some of it is still alive. In a 

 garden composed of an alluvial soil, parsnips were taken up 

 fom- feet in length. In alluvial or drift soils, on the sea-coast, 

 composed principally of sharp sand, but well fertilized, the 

 finest vegetables have been grown ; and pears, on quince 

 bottoms, have produced some of our largest and finest speci- 

 mens of fruit. In a garden, trenched to the depth of five feet, 

 the Dearborn pear has been grown so large as not to be refcog- 

 nized but by its peculiar mark. 



But deep ploughing, or trenching, is not all that is required. 

 It has been found that the deeper the ground is trenched, the 

 more surface or spring water it wiU hold ; this was partly 



