78 



THE IRRIGATION AGE. 



THE PRIMER OF IRRIGATION. 



COPYRIGHTED, 1903, BY D. H. ANDERSON. 



CHAPTER IX. 



PREPARATION OF SOIL FOR PLANTING. 



One great object of cultivating or tilling the soil is 

 to break up and loosen the earth, in order that the air 

 may have free access to the dead vegetable matter in it, 

 as well as to the living roots which spread and descend 

 to considerable depth beneath its surface. 



If it be desirable to have a luxuriant vegetation 

 upon a given field of land, that is, a good crop, one 

 must either select such kinds of seed as will grow in it, 

 or which are fitted to the kind of soil in which they are 

 planted, or change the nature of the soil so as to adapt 

 it to the crop it is desirable to raise. 



It is not denied that plants will grow in any soil 

 that contains the general elements essential to their 

 existence, but when the quantity and quality of the crop 

 are considered as of importance, it is useless to "guess," 

 for only partial satisfaction will result, and often entire 

 failure, which is usually attributed to the elements 

 or to the wrath of Providence. 



Farming for profit means that the farmer knows 

 every foot of his land and the nature of the soil ; what 

 it will grow and what it needs. A lack of this knowl- 

 edge is farming for luck, and is equivalent to gambling 

 with the eyes shut. There is less labor and twice the 

 profit in harvesting forty bushels of wheat on an acre 

 of properly cultivated soil than forty bushels on two 

 acres roughly tilled. The case is the same with any sort 

 of crop, and this is so plain that it seems absurd to men- 

 tion it, yet it is forgotten in numerous cases of farmers, 

 who go more on quantity of acreage than perfection of 

 cultivation and increase of crop. It is not extensive 

 farming that pays so well as concentrated farming. A 

 man with one hundred acres well in hand is better off 

 than another with five hundred acres of struggling crops. 

 Wholesaling in any business is more expensive and the 

 returns less than in retailing, and every farmer knows, 

 perhaps by bitter experience, that everything about a 

 farm is attended with expense, if not always in cash 

 money, then in a draft upon his future strength and 

 vitality. Irrigation, however, promises to be a cure for 

 rambling farming, by compelling concentration. Why 

 spread water over one hundred acres to raise a sparse 

 crop when the same or much less water will secure a 

 fine, luxuriant crop on twenty-five acres? When a 

 single grain of wheat may be made to stool out into sixty 

 plants, is not that better than when it stools out into 

 only twenty ? The former shows health, vigor, and pro- 

 ductiveness, the latter mediocrity. The one means a 

 syndicate, the other a home. 



The new beginner, the small farmer, reads accounts 

 of the great farming schemes, the thousands and thou- 

 sands of acres which run bank accounts into five and six 

 figures. He dreams of gang plows, steam plows, com- 

 bined harvesters and reapers, his fat cattle upon a thou- 

 sand hills, and he swells himself up like the toad in the 

 fable to equal the ox, and bursts in his effort. Let the 

 reader desirous of gaining a competency through farm- 

 ing, acquire a home before he is worn out in the strag- 

 gle, before his patient wife sinks beneath the sod in the 

 effort, and his children grow up into cowboys, rustlers 

 and desperadoes, imitate nobody, read none of the glow- 

 ing accounts of successful great farmers without at the 

 same time understanding that all such began, as a rule, 



on enormous capital, took a magnificent ranch through 

 the early demise of a worn-out ancestor, through a mort- 

 gage foreclosure of some "imitator," or raises himself 

 to grandeur upon the cheap labor of his fellowmen. 

 Let him take the soil and treat it as the foundation for 

 a home, for plenty, and the other things will come to 

 him. 



It was said in a former chapter that plants are like 

 animals, in that to grow to perfection they must be 

 properly managed and fed. A half-starved hog pro- 

 duces poor bacon, a chaff-fed horse has little energy, the 

 wool of a starveling sheep is coarse and wiry, and even 

 a human being, limited in his diet or restricted in 

 nourishment, possesses a flabby, shriveled brain and a 

 weak physical energy. Men say of animals : prune, cul- 

 tivate, select, feed ; of men : prune, cultivate, feed, and 

 wherefore not say the same of plants and the soil : prune, 

 cultivate, feed? Herein is the whole science of prepar- 

 ing the soil for cultivation, the heredity of plants, 

 their atavism, their environments, the survival of the 

 fittest, and whatever else may be said of animals and 

 humanity. But to return to the great vegetable king- 

 dom. 



All of our practical writers agree, and the every- 

 day farmer knows by his personal experience, that as the 

 systems of roots, branches and leaves are very different 

 in different vegetables, so they flourish most in different 

 soils. The plants which have bulbous roots require a 

 looser and a lighter soil than such as have fibrous roots, 

 and the plants possessing only short fibrous radicles de- 

 mand a firmer soil than such as have tap roots or ex- 

 treme lateral roots. But it may be considered as a tru- 

 ism that shallow cultivation of the soil always produces 

 minimum crops, whereas maximum harvests are gleaned 

 by deep plowing whatever may be the plant. 



It is always a question of the ability of the roots to 

 reach out after food and their exposure to air. To com- 

 prehend this fully it should be considered that there is 

 about as much of the plant under ground as above it, 

 and the experienced farmer can always tell by the 

 growth of his crop above ground whether the roots are 

 doing well under ground, if the growth is not in ac- 

 cordance with the natural progress of the plant, there is 

 some obstacle below the surface which can be removed 

 by cultivation, the loosening up of the soil to a sufficient 

 depth. How quickly growing corn revives and takes a 

 new lease upon life after deep cultivation between the 

 rows ! Not shallow cultivating, or scratching over the 

 surface, but 'deep plowing.' Level with a shallow culti- 

 vator afterward, of course, then hoe and see the stalks 

 shoot up. It is some trouble, certainly, but do you not 

 depend upon a good crop to make money, and to obtain 

 a home ? It is also a trouble to raise a child, but when 

 it grows up straight, is not the labor more amply repaid 

 than when it grows up crooked and stunted? 



The character of the cultivation, however, depends 

 upon the condition of the subsoil. Where that is hard 

 or packed, it must be broken throTigh, and up, to per- 

 mit root penetration. Frequently, not to say generally, 

 there is moisture beneath the hard, packed sub-soil, and 

 by breaking through the moisture finds its way up and 

 "slakes" the hard pan or other resistant subsoil. There 

 is also a difference in cultivation between the soils of 

 the arid and the humid regions, differences which are 

 atmospheric and also in the quantity of the organic ele- 

 ments which will be made apparent as we go along. 



It seems unnecessary to repeat so simple a thing 

 when it should be as plain as day, that plants possess 



