30 SALT LAKE COMMERCIAL CLUB 



were irrigated and twenty-two and a half acres of the most non-pro- 

 ductive was measured and Fall plowed. The following Spring (1911) 

 the plowed land was planted in oats and alfalfa and in the following 

 August an average yield of fifty-one bushels of oats per acre was 

 threshed from this twenty-two and a half acres of ground and a good 

 stand of alfalfa was secured which is increasing in yield each year. 



Mr. Mathew Baer, who is Superintendent of the Sommer's 

 Ranches in Box Elder County and who has been draining lands for 

 years both here and in the State of Illinois permits me to say for him 

 that he feels safe in expecting enough increase in crop yield in the first 

 following year to pay for the cost of tile drainage. 



These results are due not alone to the mechanical improvement re- 

 sulting from the placing of a drain system in the land, but rather to 

 the competency of the system coupled with the most intelligent process 

 of cultivation of the soil in order to renew its former consistency and 

 bring about a proper granulation of the soil, flush from the surface 

 the mineral concentrated there, thus reducing the quantity from a 

 harmful to a helpful amount, and cause (also by irrigation) the re- 

 distribution of the helpful quantity down, and through the subsoil. 



We have learned that a few essentials in the reclamation of this 

 class of lands are of the utmost importance. The system must be a 

 competent one. The placing of a line of drains through a field in a 

 haphazard manner means but little toward a competent system. The 

 lines should be laid at regular intervals of distances so that every foot 

 of ground has nearly equal facility for relief. The lines should be 

 about eighty to one hundred feet apart for each foot in depth, thus if 

 the lines are laid four feet deep they should be from 350 to 425 feet 

 apart, if they are eight or ten feet deep they can be 800 or 1000 feet 

 apart according to the texture of the soils, the shallow lines for the 

 more heavy clay, the deeper lines for the sandy and more porous soils. 

 The outlet discharge should be in the open air and not submerged 

 under the water of the stream or pond into which the soil waters may 

 be emptied so that aeriation, which is so necessary to the invalided 

 lands, can be effected by the air rushing into the tile over the flow line 

 and thus reach the pores of. the soil during the winter season when the 

 surface is frost bound. 



The land should be leveled arid surfaced in such a manner that the 

 first irrigation will cover every portion of the field so that the excess 

 minerals will be dissolved and carried away in solution. The loss or 

 retention of fertility in the soil during the period of their invalidity 

 is a matter of much concern ; it seems that where the "Black" alkali 

 predominates the minerals, the humus contents of the soil are actually 

 consumed, and while in all the alkalines there is at least a trace of 

 "Black" alkali the soils and soil waters of Utah are so free from this 

 destructive salt that we have seen vegetable and manure dressing re- 

 main intact during several years of soil inaction due to mineralization, 

 when upon the reclamation of the lands the soil would respond to the 

 influence of the fertilizer as readily as if the dressing had been re- 

 cently applied. 



