84 SOIL IMPROVEMENT 



ing the process of cultivation. Phosphate is best applied 

 either with manure or spread on the land broadcast just 

 before a clover crop or clover stubble is plowed under. 



Farmers have been taught that the conditions existing 

 in land that has been newly brought into cultivation from 

 forest conditions are due to the fact that the soil abounds 

 in humus, or organic decay, and that this humus, while 

 containing plant food, has a larger office in the darkening 

 of the soil and thus rendering it more retentive of 

 warmth. It makes the soil mellow and prevents its crust- 

 ing and baking hard, and above all makes it retentive of 

 moisture so that crops are carried through a dry spell 

 more successfully. 



In most of our old soils the long continued and care- 

 less cultivation has robbed the soil of this valuable humus 

 and any effort towards its improvement must depend on 

 the bringing back of the conditions that existed in the 

 freshly cleared soil. 



The legume crops then not only enable us, through 

 bacterial life that exists with them, to gather the nitrogen 

 that floats as a gas in the air and get it combined in the 

 soil for the use of crops, but they enable us to restore 

 to the soil the humus making materials that were 

 formerly supplied by the forest growth. 



With cowpeas and crimson clover the whole face of the 

 country has been changed in many localities where for- 

 merly the soil was virtually worn out. There are splen- 

 did farms and farmers growing rich on lands formerly 

 thought to be worthless. 



The humus restored to the soil through these legumes 

 has enabled farmers to use commercial fertilizers more 

 profitably, because the moisture-retaining nature of the 

 organic decay dissolves the fertilizer that would have 

 been almost useless, and the growing of truck and small 

 fruits for the leading markets has developed in a won- 

 derful way. 



