HARROWING, CULTIVATING 165 



when his plants are trying to weather a dry 

 season should always be to keep a few inches of 

 loose soil on top of the ground. When it gets 

 compacted again, as it always does after a while, 

 loosen it again, weeds or no weeds. Eventually the 

 loosened soil falls back into place and becomes com- 

 pacted again by its own weight ; but one slight rain 

 will make more of a crust over it than two weeks 

 of settling. That is why it is more difficult to pre- 

 serve a soil mulch in humid regions than in the 

 semi-arid sections of the West. Where there is 

 no rain whatever during three or four months 

 of the growing season there is not much diffi- 

 culty in making and keeping a most efficient 

 dust mulch. In the East, where the cultivation 

 of one day may lose half its value because of 

 a slight shower the following night, it is a more 

 tedious job. However, the Western man needs a 

 better mulch he has much less water to use and 

 has to guard it jealously. 



How Often to Cultivate. There can be no rule 

 as to the frequency of cultivation for saving water 

 except this: cultivate often enough to keep the 

 surface soil at least fairly mellow and free from 

 crust. To do this may take eight cultivations one 

 year and twelve the next year, on the same field. 

 An adjoining field, with soil having a greater ca- 

 pacity to hold water, may give equal results from 

 half as much tillage. 



The reliable guides are the way the crops grow 

 and the condition of the soil. When the corn 

 leaves begin to curl in the heat of the day, when the 

 lower leaves of the peas begin to shrivel and droop, 

 when the potatoes look dispirited and the sugar 

 beets droopy, the time has come for some energetic 

 work. If the ground is hard, loosen it deeply with 



