October 7, 1896.] 



Garden and Forest. 



401 



GARDEN AND FOREST. 



PUBLISHED WEEKLY BY 



THE GARDEN AND FOREST PUBLISHING CO. 



Office: Tribune Building, New York. 



Conducted by Professor C. S. Sargent. 



ENTERED AS SECOND-CLASS MATTER AT THE POST-OFFICE AT NEW YORK, N. Y. 



NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 7, 18 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGE. 



Editorial Article : — The Conservation of Moisture In the Soil 401 



Roadsides in Autumn D. H. R. Gaodale. 402 



Product of White Pine per Acre Edmund Hersey. 402 



Foreign Correspondence : — London Letter IV. Watson. 403 



New or Little-known Plants: — Diervilla Japonica. (With figure.) C. S S. 404 



Cultural Department: —Asiatic Cantaloupes Robert P. Harris 404 



Grapes under Glass William Scott. 406 



Carnations, New and Old T. D. Hatfield. 406 



Violet Culture in Pots A. McKay. 407 



Some Autumn Flowers M. Barker. 407 



Correspondence : — Addition.il Notes on Compass Plants Rev. E. y. Hill. 407 



The New Ozai k Iris .Lora S. La Ma nee. 408 



Yarrow as a Lawn Plant John F. Cowell. 408 



Utilizing Choke Cherries J. E. Learned. 408 



The Forest : — The Hurma Teak Forests. — X Sir Dietrich Brand is. 408 



Recent Publications 4°9 



Notes 4 10 



Illustration : — Diervilla Japonica, Fig. 53 405 



The Conservation of Moisture in the Soil. 



ONE of the best-known facts in vegetable physiology is 

 that living plants are made up largely of water, and 

 that cultivated crops need an enormous amount of it for 

 their development. Succulent fruits and vegetables, like 

 Melons, Lettuce and Asparagus, when analyzed show as 

 much as ninety-five per cent, of water. Root crops, 

 like Beets and Carrots, may contain as much as ninety 

 per cent. Grass and grain contain more than eighty 

 per cent, and when at the blossoming stage as much 

 as seventy per cent., and even the mature leaves of 

 trees, and often the entire trees, are considerably more 

 than half water. Of course, the cells and cell-walls of 

 living plants must be kept in this moist, half-liquid con- 

 dition to carry on their life processes, and since the water 

 which is continually transpired through the leaves must 

 be steadily replaced by fresh supplies drawn up through 

 the roots, a plant in the course of its growth must take up 

 many times its weight of water from the soil. Experiments 

 in Prussia have demonstrated that for every ton of dry 

 matter in an average crop of barley the plants exhale during 

 their growth 310 tons of water ; at the Cornell Experiment 

 Station one ton of dry matter in a crop of oats represented 

 an expenditure of 522 tons of water, and about the same 

 proportion was needed in Wisconsin, according to observa- 

 tions in the experiment station of that state. In all these 

 cases it is probable that better crops would have required 

 more water, and since many different investigations have 

 shown that the rain which falls upon a crop during its 

 growth is not sufficient to support it, one can readily realize 

 the importance of securing as much as possible of what 

 falls during the entire year and of preserving it for use 

 when the plants need it. When it is remembered, too, 

 that all the ash ingredients — that is, the matter left after 

 combustion — as well as other important elements, are taken 

 up in a highly diluted form by the roots, which means that 

 the fertility of the soil depends largely upon moisture, the 

 furnishing of crops with the proper amount of water at the 

 proper time may be considered as the fundamental problem 

 of agriculture and horticulture. 



Where irrigation is not habitually practiced, as is the 

 case in most regions which are not classed as arid, it would 



seem that the first essential of successful tillage would be 

 to prepare the soil to receive and hold as much water as 

 possible. This means in many cases deep plowing, in all 

 cases thorough pulverization of the soil and not a mere 

 turning over of the surface. In his book on The Soil, Pro- 

 fessor King says: "Since each independent grain of a 

 moist soil is more or less completely surrounded by a film 

 of water it is evident that the largest aggregate surface area 

 may retain the most water per cubic foot. Now, a cubic 

 foot of marbles one inch in diameter possesses an aggre- 

 gate surface of 37. 7 square feet, while if the marbles were 

 reduced in diameter to one-thousandth of an inch, the total 

 area per cubic foot is increased to 37.700 square feet," 

 which means that a lumpy soil with large particles will 

 absorb much less water than if it were made fine, and it 

 means also that its power of retaining the moisture is 

 reduced as well as its power of absorbing it. The break- 

 ing up of the soil and subsoil in autumn is therefore indi- 

 cated as a means of checking the loss of water during the 

 winter and spring by the drainage over the surface of rains 

 and melted snows. When the soil is in good mechanical 

 condition, if a crop is kept growing on it in the winter, the 

 plants help to bind it and save the soluble plant-food which 

 can be turned under in the spring. This also increases the 

 humus in the soil, which adds to its capacity for holding 

 water, besides supplying a storehouse for nitrogen. 



But after all possible water is collected the problem of 

 preserving it still remains. A soil which is in the best con- 

 dition to hold the water which falls from the clouds is also 

 in condition to draw up by capillary movement the stores 

 of water from the deep permanent supplies of ground-water. 

 Professor Johnson has illustrated the need of a soil made 

 mellow and porous by tillage by comparing it with the 

 strands of a wick in a lamp which neither fit too tightly nor 

 too loosely in the socket ; in other words, there is a certain 

 degree of porosity which lifts the most water from below to 

 supply what is exhaled by plants or evaporated from the 

 surface. Some kind of mulching is essential to check this 

 evaporation, and, as we have often explained (see, for exam- 

 ple, vol. vi., pages 281, 411), shallow tillage acts as a mulch 

 and is the most practicable way of providing it. Some 

 interesting experiments which have been made by Profes- 

 sor Card in the University of Nebraska show that a mulch 

 of coarse manure is better than surface tillage, but this is 

 too expensive to use on a large scale. His experiments 

 also showed that lightly stirred soil provided a mulch 

 which was nearly as effective. The accepted theory is, 

 that the water which is drawn by capillary attraction 

 through a compact, though porous, soil to the surface 

 evaporates there and passes away, while if this surface is 

 broken and thoroughly worked to a depth of a couple of 

 inches, the continuous pores are interrupted and the loosened 

 earth, spread like a blanket over the compacted soil below, 

 checks the rise of moisture and its dissipation in vapor. 

 The result is that the water which would otherwise be 

 wasted is put to use. Since its escape frorn the surface is 

 prevented, it is forced to pass through the plant and do 

 its work before it is transpired from the leaves. This is 

 not an unsupported theory, and we have, time and again, 

 quoted the experience of farmers, horticulturists and fruit 

 growers (see, for example, vol. vii., page 56) to show that 

 fruit and garden crops keep on growing through a drought 

 under shallow tillage when uncultivated crops are at a 

 standstill. 



Now, there is nothing new in all this, and yet every year 

 thousands of dollars are lost by neglecting these plain 

 teachings. Of course, besides the considerations we have 

 mentioned, there are others to be taken into account, such 

 as underdraining, tree belts to check the sweep of drying 

 winds, etc., but tillage is the prime factor, ami we endorse 

 thoroughly the conclusion of a bulletin lately issued by the 

 Cornell Experiment Station, in which Mr. L. A. Clinton, 

 the Assistant Agriculturist, says: "The importance of 

 thorough tillage to conserve moisture cannot be made too 

 emphatic. Deficiency in rainfall, with intensified agricul- 



