EARTHWORM TILLAGE 151 



He says, "I went into our little fields with a heavy plow 

 hooked to a 20 H.P. caterpillar tractor, determined to give that 

 old land the works. I plowed deep. I put on lime and commer- 

 cial fertilizer. I did everything the experts advised. I firmly 

 believed with all its stones our New England soil was good soil. 

 But the best I could get was 80 bushels of corn, in spite of a lot 

 of fertilizer and hard work." Ultimately, Gallup hit on his 

 answer the spring-tooth harrow plus earthworms. 



No one, Gallup says, knows all about earthworms. They 

 eat and digest both decaying vegetation and soil itself. Their 

 tunnels carry air and water into the ground. Exactly what hap- 

 pens in the gizzards between their suction mouths and the fertile 

 casts is yet to be found out. 



A scientist's count indicates that in Gallup's best fields as 

 many as 150,000 worms inhabit each acre. A western student 

 believes the worm population on an acre could be increased to 

 ten times that number, enough to bring two and half tons of 

 digested material to the surface each twenty- four hours. That's 

 a lot of plant food in any language. 



Gallup figures that four years are needed to build up the 

 worm numbers. Harrowing the trash in helps in the first year 

 to create their food supply. The second year the breeding stock 

 begins to congregate, the third it multiplies. By the fourth the 

 worms are heaving up subsoil in quantity. 



"Nowadays," he explains, "we get out with the tooth-harrow 

 as soon as the frost is out. That is a good three weeks earlier 

 than we could use a plow, and a couple of weeks before the land 

 could be worked with a disc harrow. Grass and perennial weeds 

 can then be killed with surprising ease." 



Gallup's cultivating method is to set the teeth of the harrow 

 at the most shallow notch, and to go over the field several times. 

 Then he spreads his manure and promptly harrows it in. After 

 each heavy spring rain he harrows again, both ways, each time 

 lowering the teeth one notch. 



Frequently people ask, "What about the trash? Doesn't it 



