314 



THE GARDEN AND FIELD. 



Devember, 191 3 



1 go back to German South-west 

 Africa fiUetl with a new hope, for 

 now I am con%ince<l that dry- 

 farming is destined to revolution- 

 ise our agricultural industrj-. Tru- 

 ly, as the motto of your Congre'ks 

 puts it : " The destiny of South 

 Africa is on the d<ry lands." 



Kvery great movement is indis- 

 solubly linked up with the per- 

 sonality of a few earnest workers. 

 So it is with dry-farming in South 

 Africa. The signal success which 

 wc have achieved is due in large 

 measure to Captain Heinrich du 

 Toit, a brave Boer officer of the 

 former Staats Artillerie who bore 

 a charmed life, as shown by marks 

 of twentv-two bullets. Captain du 

 Toit returned to the peacefid life 

 of a Cape P'armer. When the Gov- 

 ernment dry-land station was es- 

 tablished he was appointed man- 

 ager — a post which he still holds. 

 He has since become the tireless 

 missionary of the new agriculture 

 amongst the Dutch and the Eng- 

 lish settlers on the dry lands of 

 the Union. 



— ^loisture Bank and Humus 

 Bank. — 



Hardly a season passes but we 

 hear of crops that have failed be- 

 cause of lack of rain, and this com- 

 plaint is not confined to anv parti- 

 cular dominion, but is more oir 

 less common to all parts of the 

 Empire. Search the pages of the 

 rural magazines, consult the 

 columns of the daily Press, and, 

 sooner or later, your eve will light 

 on that sombre line : " The crop 

 has failed this year owing to 

 drought." And the amazing thing 

 is that no remedy is ever suggest- 

 ed, no preventive is ever pro- 

 posed. Decade after decade, year 

 in and year out, drought finds the 

 farmer unprepared, watching "sadly 



his withering crop in sun- 

 scorched waterless soil. 



The Alpha and Omega, in the 

 fight against drought is the mois- 

 ture-saving fallow. Without it all 

 effort is useless. With it all soil- 

 drought disappears. Suppose we 

 start with the bare moisture-sav- 

 ing fallow and we conserve six 

 inches of rain out of a 1 2-inch an- 

 nual rainfall. We hold the fallow 

 for a year and then sow our wheat 

 in a moist seed-bed. The second 

 season another twelve inches m.ay^ 

 fall in the field, of which, say, six 

 inches are utilised by the plants, 

 and so, at the end of the s»acond 

 3'ear, instead of one or two pos- 

 sible failures, we reap a 30-bushel* 

 (12-inch rainfall) crop of wheat. 



The establishment of a moisture 

 saxings bank to pay cash or\ de- 

 mand is the fundamental principle 

 in dealing successfully with recur- 

 rent seasonal droughts. This prac- 

 tice is strongly advocated by the 

 foremost Australian authority on 

 dry -farming, Sutton, who writes : 



In dry districts a proper system 

 of fallowing is therefore an ^essen- 

 tial of success, and the g;eneral 

 adoption of a proper system in ouij 

 wheat districts is a factor which 

 will do more than any other to re- 

 move wheat-growing from the area 

 of speculation and place it on a 

 sound and solid basis. With a 



*Widtsoe calculates the crop- 

 producing power of rainfall as fol- 

 lows : 



One acre inch of water will pro- 

 duce, 2/^ bushels of wheat. 



Ten acre inches of water will 

 produce 25 bushels of wheat. 



Twenty acre inches of water will 

 produce 50 bushels of wheat. 



£1 10/= Housewives Chance £1 10/= 



For the funi of £1 ^0s deliver to Adelaide Railway Station the foUowine goods, 



carefully paoked. If jou want them put on board boat, please add 1;- extra. Goods of equal 

 value not mentioned in this list may be substituted in place of any of the smaller lines. If the 

 (loods are to be booked to a prepnid station or sidinc, it will prevent delay if you add what you 

 think will b« ihe cost of freight. 



One Bag Be>t White Sugar, 501b. CROSS WKIGHT at Id. PER LB. £0 4 2 



Two Tins New Season's Jam. 4 lbs. lor . .. S 



Four lib. Tins Australian Meats 1" 



Four larije siie Tina Miller's Peerless Shoe niaekinp for 4 



Two Bottles l.eego s Ceb brated Bendiijo Tomato Sauce tor . . 6 



One Tin Kruse's Insecticide .. .. .. 1 



Two Bottles McLintock'a Madras I'icklee .. (I 9 



One Bottle Hire'e American Root Beer for .. .. 1 



One Tin Alkali, for ccrubliing and cleansinvc, Od. size .. 1 



One Nice Sponge, worth 6d. .. .. 1 



Bottle Mastn's Ciderine ... .. 1 



One Dozen Belt .Safety Hatches .. .. .. .. .. 001 



One lOlb. and one &lb Tin, gross weight, 2/- quality Tea, reduced to buyers of this 



parcel for .. .. .. .. .. .. 1 2 C 



TOWN AND COUNTRY STORES, LIMITED, ru^^u^b I?r«^ 



£1 10 

 ET EAST. 



K. A. WILSON, Manatfing Director. 



proper system in practice, the rain- 

 fall of the previous, or a portion 

 of the previous year, can life stored, 

 ton.ser\ed, and utilised for a sub- 

 sequent crop. 



And he closed an attractive ad- 

 dress to an assemblage of far- 

 mers with these words : "Go back 

 home and fallow till harvest time, 

 and when the harvest is over, starti 

 to work the fallow and keep at it 

 until seed-^thne." 



It may be said that the practice 

 of growing crops on only half of 

 the aralile land and maintaining 

 the other half in clean fallows 

 means a good deal of extra la- 

 bour. That is so, but it also 

 means a certain crop ;in seasons of 

 drought. It may be said that 

 the continuous cultivation of the 

 moisture-saving fallows will even- 

 tually hum out the yegetable 

 matter in the soU. It may be 

 so ; but the remedy is at ha:nd. On 

 worn-out fallows you can always 

 grow green legumes, fill the soil 

 with nitrogen, and so gradually 

 establish a humus bank. These two 

 sa\ing banks — the IMoisture Bank 

 and the Hum'us Bank — will secure 

 the farmer against the severest 

 drought and make possible a per- 

 manent fertility on the dry-lands 

 of South Africa. 



— The Year of Drought. — 



The prospect of a year of drought 

 is the favourite topic of conversa- 

 tion for those lukewarm Laodi- 

 ceans who, by idle criticism, vain- 

 ly try to check the progress of dry 

 farming. Drought to the intelli- 

 gent dry-farmer is no more than a 

 passing storm to the skilful mari- 

 ner at sea. Before us lie two 

 authentic records of farms where 

 the year of drought brings no dis- 

 may. These records are taken 

 from the adir-irable work on dry- 

 farming of the most eminent Ame- 

 rican authority, Dr. .John H. Widt- 

 soe, of Utah. The first farm be- 

 longs to Senator Barnes, of Utah, 

 and is situated in the Salt Lake 

 Valle\'. The climate is semi-arid, 

 the summecs are dry and the 

 evaporation large. Over a period 

 of nineteen years crop and rainfall 

 records have been most carefully 

 kept. There has been only one 

 crop failure, and that was the 

 lir.st, when the land was nrvi yet 

 projierly tilled. The heaviest crop 

 of wheat, 29.8 bushels, was har- 

 vested in the year 1902, when next 

 to the lowest rainfall occurred, 

 which \ aried ^rom 10.33 inches to 

 i<S.36 inches. Moi.sturc-saving fal 

 lows followed every crop. 



A .second and equally instructive 

 record is furnished by the Govern- 



