APPLES 235 
selected a strip of about 10 acres as an 
experiment, plowing five acres as deeply 
as possible by the trench method. The 
other five acres I plowed according to 
the usual method of turning a furrow 
about four or five inches deep I then 
planted corn, potatoes, pumpkins, melons, 
sorghum, kKaffir corn and millet. We 
planted across the field, making the rows 
run the short way so that each kind of 
product would grow, half of it on the 
deep plowing and half on the shallow. 
In every case the deep plowing was bet- 
ter, and in some cases it produced more 
than twice what the shallow plowing pro- 
duced. I therefore proved that by proper 
cultivation it was profitable to grow crops 
where often the efforts would otherwise 
end in failure. It was not unusual for 
travelers passing that field to stop and 
inquire what made the difference in the 
apparent size, health and vigor of the 
same kind of products grown so closely 
together Our answer was that we were 
making experiments like Dr. Franklin, 
who believed that a certain kind of plas- 
ter would greatly improve the land for 
the production of wheat but had some 
difficulty in convincing his neighbors. He 
therefore placed it on the land in the 
form of large letters which read, “This 
has been plastered.” As the traveler 
passed by he could see the white plaster 
and read the letters. When the wheat 
grew the soil on which the letters had 
been placed produced greener, more vig- 
orous and taller wheat than the other. 
As the traveler passed by he could see 
and read from the field of growing wheat, 
“This has been plastered.” 
Another experiment of a similar kind, 
but with reference to trees, occurred at 
Jetmore, Kansas. A farmer in that 
county for some offense had been placed 
in jail to languish during the summer 
until the autumn or winter term of court, 
awaiting trial. Being accustomed to hard 
labor, the confinement of the jail was 
very irksome and he obtained permission 
from the sheriff to cultivate the trees 
that grew in the courthouse block. When 
I visited that town I saw that the trees 
in the community lacked vigor and most 
of them were dying, but the trees in the 
courthouse block were green and vigor- 
ous and making rapid growth. When I 
asked the reason I was told that this man 
had been given a horse, cultivator and 
hoe, and that he spent half of every day 
cultivating the trees, going over the 
ground once or more each week during 
the summer and autumn. The soil was 
as fine as ashes, but little moisture es- 
caped by evaporation: the roots of the 
trees absorbed the retained moisture and 
with it the plant food that was contained 
in the soil, 
Campbell System 
About the same time the government 
established a branch experiment station 
at Dodge City and obtained results simi- 
lar to those described. The Campbell sys- 
tem of dry farming is simply another 
name for the system recommended by the 
government experimenters, and which has 
been proven by varied experiences to be 
the system best adapted to semi-arid re- 
gions. This system simply means deep 
plowing, then cultivating, harrowing, roll- 
ing, harrowing again, and repeating this 
process at certain periods during the crop 
season, and more especially after every 
shower of rain. By this process, vast 
wheat fields are now yielding their mil- 
lions of bushels of grain, homes and or- 
chards and groves are seen by thousands 
where once was desert, and millions of 
acres of land which were once nothing 
but waste are producing wealth. 
Good cultivation causes the soil to ab- 
sorb moisture. This is seen when we com- 
pare a well plowed field with the roadway 
by its side. We pass along the roadway 
as a heavy rain is falling and we see that 
the water which falls upon the plowed 
field is being absorbed by the mellow 
earth, while the hard surface of the road 
is absorbing it very slowly, so slowly 
that the ditches, trenches and wheel 
tracks are full, carrying it away. That 
which we see in the road during the rain 
is true in some degree on the hard surface 
soil of an uncultivated field, and in a de- 
gree also, in a field of shallow plowing. 
What Cultivation Does 
Cultivation makes plant food available 
by breaking up the harder chunks, clods 
