THE DRY FARMING CONGRESS. 



193 



trip through Alberta delivering a series of lectures. At one of the meet- 

 ings a gentleman arose, and said: "Mr. Campbell, I heard your lecture 

 last year and obtained one of your books. I have followed your mstruc- 

 tions to the letter, and I havn't as good crops as my neighbor who didn't 

 follow it; now what was the matter?" I said: "My friend, I will have 

 to ask you a few questions. What did you do after you broke your 

 ground?" "I double disked it." "Can you find in our book, or did >ou 

 listen to any remark in our address that suggested double discing the sod 

 after it was turned over?" "Why, yes." "No, sir, it isn't there. I rec- 

 ommended the disc in several instances, but never on ground in that 

 condition. 



Soil Treatment 



'He had turned his sod over and then in order to do good work he 

 double disked it. What does that do? It cuts it up in little lumps. Now 

 the plow turns under about three inches of good new soil and puts those 

 lumps down under, and all the discs you could put over it couldn't oblit- 

 erate the air spaces so as to develop nitrification because of too much 

 air. I could relate to you dozens of instances of this same kind. Another 

 instance which happened near Holburn, where a man had prepared a 

 I'iece of ground by thorough tillage. He had grown a crop that was ap- 

 parently 50 to 100 per cent better than his neighbors, and he remarked: 

 'I am going to follow your plan.' There is one thing I urge and that is 

 to double disc the ground as quickly as possible after the crop is taken 

 off. Th""s gentleman hired two discs and had them follow the harves- 

 ters. The threshing was done in about two week? when he began to 

 plow. He plowed about five rods wide and followed the plow with sub 

 surface packer and followed that with the harrow. At this junction he 

 was called away and a number of weeks elapsed before anything further 

 was done. This would be from the middle of July to the middle or August. 

 The result was an enormous growth of weeds on the ground that had 

 been plowed. 



"He came back and used the same plow, used the same depth, fol- 

 lowed the plow with the sub-surface packer and followed that with the 

 harrow, just the same as he had done at first. After the entire field was 

 plowed there came on top of this a gentle all-day drizzling rain. The fol- 

 lowing afternoon the surface was just right to harrow. The field had a 

 uniform appearance and it was seeded with 25 pounds of seed. 



Results of Methodical Work. 



"Myself and two other gentlemen examined that land at harvest time 

 the next year and it was our uniform opinion that the part plowed first 

 would go 50 bushels, while the part plowed last would go 20. Gentlemen, 

 I relate this to show you the importance of following lines. What was 

 the difficulty? Wias it because he turned under the weeds? No sir, that 

 cut very little figure. It was because the weeds wore allowed to grow 

 and extract from the soil the moisture and deposit it so that when the 

 plow went in it broke it up in lumps and when the packor went over it, 



