194 POWER AND THE PLOW 



Plows for unusually deep tillage have never become generally 

 popular, in any section, because of the power required to oper- 

 ate them. National and state agricultural authorities recom- 

 mend their use at least once in two or three seasons, but only 

 an occasional small farmer owns one. For the cultivation of 

 sugar beets in Kansas, Colorado, California and other states 

 in the West, and of sugar cane in the South, in Porto Rico, Cuba, 

 and the Hawaiian Islands, plowing at least twelve niches deep 

 is regarded as a necessity. In the culture of cane, in the South, 

 a large, heavy plow with double moldboard is used widely for 

 breaking out the old middles and for bedding up the rows. 

 The cable-drawn plows used on sugar-beet ranches in the West 

 have much higher moldboards in proportion to width of furrow 

 than ordinary old land plows, and have much greater flare, 

 or overhead. This is due largely to the higher speed at which 

 they are drawn. Numerous gangs have been put forth, in 

 both disk and moldboard types, in which one plow is set below 

 and to one side of the other. As a rule these are made to 

 bring up the lower stratum and deposit it upon what has been 

 the surface layer. While this is objectionable in case too much 

 fresh earth is brought to the surface at one time, these plows 

 eventually secure a thorough mixture of the soil and form an 

 ideal seed bed up to 18 inches in depth. Up to the present 

 time makers of these plows have failed to make them in gangs 

 suitable for mechanical traction power. 



For loosening the subsoil without turning it to the surface, the 

 subsoil plow is used. This consists of a shoe or beak, attached 

 to the bottom of a powerful knife-like standard. Usually it is 

 run in the furrow following an ordinary turning plow. It is 

 used chiefly to prepare the subsoil for deeper root growth and 

 to increase the moisture reservoir. In regions of moderate 

 rainfall it is seldom used, and deeper plowing in dry-farming 

 sections is rendering the subsoil plow less popular. 



