ALKALI AND WATER LOGGED LANDS 13 



Mr. IV. C. Stark, 



Secretary Commercial Club, 

 Salt Lake City. 



In response to your request that I should give to you some special 

 expression of my views regarding alkali lands and their cultural value 

 I might say, summarily, that hoth chemical investigation and practical 

 experience have shown that when such lands are once freed from excess 

 of salts which injure useful vegetation they prove exceptionally and 

 lastingly productive; more so even than the non-alkaline lands lying 

 adjacent. The fact that they result from the failure of adequate rainfall 

 to leach out the salts at once indicates that all the active soil ingredients 

 are retained, the useful ones as well as the useless, so that so soon as 

 the useless or injurious salts like common and Glaubers salts and 

 carbonate of soda are removed there remains an accumulation of plant 

 food which for a long time renders fertilization unnecessary, provided 

 only that proper deep cultivation is practiced and maintained, so that 

 the crop roots can reach the great depths to which the available soil 

 almost always reaches in these lands. They are therefore eminently 

 adapted to intensive culture, such as truck-farming, where markets are 

 available. The maintenance of good surface mulch of loose soil, to 

 prevent unnnecessary evaporation from the surface, is of course as 

 needful in alkali lands as in other dry-farming soils of the arid region. 

 But owing to the remaining saline ingredients, reclaimed alkali soils 

 are always more easily kept in a moist condition which greatly helps 

 vegetation. 



While the reclamation of alkali lands by drainage is somewhat ex- 

 pensive in extreme cases, there is a large porportion of them that, while 

 showing some salts on the surface before cultivation, may be made to 

 produce large crops by deep and thorough tillage and the maintenance 

 of a good surface mulch, alone. The one deficiency of most of these 

 lands is lack of humus, but this can readily be made up by turning under 

 the abundant vegetation they produce. 



E. W. HILGARD. 



