CHAPTER I 



THE IMPROVEMENT OF THE SOIL 



The productiveness of land may be increased in two ways: 

 the soil may be better managed and the plant may be better 

 fed. We shall deal with the first in this chapter and the second 

 later on. 



When left to itself soil has the awkward property of getting 

 beaten down by the rain and then drying into hard clods or masses 

 unsuited for plant growth. The farmer has to counteract this, and 

 much of his time and a great deal of his money is spent in picking 

 the soil up again and getting it once more into a proper tilth. 



There are three useful means for bringing the soil into good 

 condition: by cultivation, by chalking or liming, and by green 

 manuring. 



Cultivation. 



The first object of cultivation is to obtain a good seed bed 

 sufficiently compact to ensure close contact between the soil and 

 the seeds or the rootlets, and yet sufficiently broken up to allow 

 the roots to penetrate as far as necessary. Fortunately the sub- 

 soil needs less attention than the surface soil and for this reason 

 it is often neglected. Once in every four or five years, however, 

 it should be broken up either by ploughing to an extra depth or 

 by means of a subsoiler following behind the plough. This can 

 conveniently be done for the root or potato crops. The following 

 results were obtained at Rothamsted with potatoes, each figure 

 being the mean of five plots: 



tons cwts 



Subsoiled 7 8 per acre. 

 Not subsoiled 6 18 



In favour of subsoiling 10 



R. M. 1 



