144 The Principles of Fruit-growing. 
little water could get into the land; the dish-pan 
was shallow, and the early rains made mud-puddles 
or passed off over the surface. Upon such lands, 
deep plowing is necessary, in order to break up the 
hard-pan and to increase the storage capacity of 
the soil. If the land is open and leachy, shallow 
plowing may be necessary, else the soil may be loos- 
ened too much. And the water-storage capacity of 
most soils may be increased by putting humus—or 
decaying organic matter—into them. It will thus 
be seen that the methods of conserving or saving 
moisture must be worked out—or rather thought 
out—by each farmer for his own farm. 
The water of rains and snows is held upon the 
surface for the time, and allowed to percolate into 
the soil, if the land is rough and open from recent 
plowing, if there is a cover of herbage upon the 
land, or if the surface is soft and mellow. Fall 
plowing may be advisable in order to catch the 
water of the inactive season, and also to expose 
hard soils to weathering, and it may hasten the 
work of spring. But clay lands with little humus 
in them may puddle or cement if fall-plowed, and 
if harrowed and fitted in the fall; and in the 
south all rolling lands are exposed to serious gully- 
ing by fall plowing. As a general thing, it is not 
advisable to plow fruit plantations in the fall, how- 
ever, not only because it may too greatly expose the 
roots to the weather, but because it prevents the 
ameliorating of such lands by the use of some in- 
cidental or catch crop which may be sown after the 
