DRY FARMING CONGRESS. 



31 



mie. Some of the indications shown by the experiments the first year may 

 be interesting to you. 



Indications Given by Soil Moisture Tests. 



Comparison of Crops. — One of the most important things for success 

 in arid land farming is growing drouth-resistant plants. The evidences of 

 drouth resistance shown by the moisture experiments are the power of the 

 plant to live and grow while the amount of moisture in the soil is at the 

 minimum, and also the use or evaporation of the least amount of moisture 

 in the growth of the plants to maturity. Taking the former as a criterion, 

 it was found that, in general, the alfalfa and oats subsisted with the least 

 amount of moisture in the soil of any of the crops grown at the Experiment 

 Farm. Next, in order of the minimum amount of moisture found during 

 the season in the several plats of each crop, came fall rye, field peas, spring 

 rye, and Defiance wheat. It would not be fair to say, however, that the 

 crop of oats, with a small amount of alfalfa mixed with it, was the most 

 drouth-resistant of these crops. The charts show that they had more 

 drouth to stand and stood it fairly well, while the others perhaps were 

 not tested by the dryness to the limit of their resistance. Taking the 

 second criterion, that of the crops which used least moisture during their 

 growth, we find the order almost reversed — the potatoes, which were 

 planted very wide apart in the rows, standing at the head of the list, and 

 the field peas standing at the foot, using the most moisture during the 

 time in which the observations were taken. Between these two extremes 

 came the other crops in the following order: Defiance wheat used per- 

 haps the least moisture after potatoes, then alfalfa and oats, spring rye, 

 and fall rye, which used most moisture, excepting the field peas. 



Comparisons of Soil Culture. — According to the original plan of the 

 cultivation of the plats, different methods of soil culture were to be thor- 

 oughly tested in the depth of plowing, sub-soiling, harrowing with various 

 makes of harrows, and cultivation by inter-tillage in wide rows after the 

 grain reached some height. The experiments of this year seem to show that 

 the deep plowing was beneficial, but the sub-soiling did not have any ap- 

 parent effect, and that the shallow cultivation produced better results in 

 retaining the moisture than did the deep cultivation. The more thinly 

 planted crops naturally retained more moisture throughout the season than 

 those more thickly planted, and on the plats where the same amount of 

 grain per acre was planted in eight-inch and sixteen-inch rows, the plats 

 planted in eight-inch rows retained more moisture than those in sixteen- 

 inch rows, possibly because the grain was much thicker in the sixteen-inch 

 rows than in the others. Much of the cultivation was not carried out as 

 thoroughly as was planned in the beginning, probably because of the large 

 number of plats and the lack of time and men. These deductions, as indi- 

 cated in the sub-head, are only preliminary, and vbefore they are taken as 

 authoritative they should be corroborated or disproved by subsequent tests. 



There is one feature of much dry farming that does not appeal to us, 

 and that is the absence on the farm of domestic water supply and water 



