418 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER 
June 15 
THE SOIL. 
Part VIII. 
Wk now understand pretty well what 
the soil is, and how it was formed. We 
also know how important it is that the 
soil should be handled so as to conserve 
and retain the water. Before discuss¬ 
ing the composition of the soil as a 
matter of direct plant food, and why 
fertilizers or manure need to be added, 
let us read the following timely article : 
Importance of the Seed Bed. 
A few days ago, an enterprising neigh¬ 
bor who is interesting himself in small 
fruits, drove a water tank into my creek 
to haul water for a lot of fine currant 
cuttings put out last year. I was satis¬ 
fied that he was makiDg a mistake, and 
was turning his laudable efforts into 
very exhaustive channels. I sat down 
on the bank of the creek, and said, “ L)o 
you think that you have used the best 
possible means to conserve the moisture 
naturally found in your soil? ” 
“I guess so; 1 plowed my fruit (two 
acres) with a double-shovel twice.” 
“ Did you break the winter crust right 
along in the rows ? ” 
“No, I couldn’t get that close; the 
ground is cracked three inches deep in 
the rows, and it is so very dry that I 
just thought it would do so much good 
to pour those cracks full of water.” 
“Are the middles of the rows rough 
and cloddy from plowing ? ” 
“ Not very ; they aren’t fine either.” 
“Let’s see; one inch of rain is 113 
tons per acre.” 
“ One hundred and thirteen tons ? ” 
“ Yes, sir. How long will it take you 
to haul that from the creek here (1% 
mile)? \ T ou know that when it rains, 
Nature first makes a humid atmosphere 
which stops evaporation, then veils the 
sun usually over one night; then it 
rains. All your sprinkling is in the hot 
sunshine, hot air, hot earth, and drying 
wind.” 
“ I see.” 
“It does little good, and often harms 
to wet the surface soil when it is al¬ 
lowed to dry off right away. It forms a 
crust which excludes the air, and pre¬ 
vents its solvent action on plant food. 
Nature bestows as great a bounty in the 
happy conditions she brings about, 
which allow the surplus moisture to 
penetrate the soil and keep the baking 
sun off till the wettest stage has passed, 
as she does in her downpour of rain.” 
“ I had never thought of that before ! 
I expect that is so ! We make brick by 
exposing wet earth to the sun. It’s a big 
job to haul 113 tons of water, and one 
inch rain wouldn’t last more than a week 
or two. I fear the plants don’t get much 
good from my watering.” 
“ Suppose that 113 tons of water lasts 
about 10 days ; that would be a loss of 
nearly 12 tons a day, or, say, 20 tons a 
day during the first few days that the 
ground is wettest. Experiment stations 
show that about two-tliirds of this loss 
of moisture may be prevented by the 
soil mulch.” 
“ That’s just what I’ve got. I have 
noticed it in the papers, and plowed my 
truck twice.” 
“ Yes, but you don’t seem to under¬ 
stand fully just how the mulch should 
be made ! A bunch of clods on a seed¬ 
bed do almost no good. A i-ough, rag¬ 
ged, furrowed, ridged mulch is of little 
use, and you had no mulch on that 
white cracked crust in your rows.” 
“ What’s better than a double-shovel 
to stir ground with ? ” 
“If you had followed with a harrow 
made to go between the rows, it would 
have fined and closed your mulch much 
better.” Long before this, he had be¬ 
come much interested, had left his wagon 
and team standing knee-deep in water, 
and had crawled out on the grassy bank 
with me. I said, “ Now just let me tell 
you how I’d irrigate those plants ! I’d 
buy either a Planet Jr., or an Iron Age 
cultivator, with iron frame and 13 
shovels about the size of my thumb, a 
wheel in front controlled by a lever, and 
a pulverizer dragging behind like an in¬ 
verted manure fork. I’d run that thing 
very close to those currant cuttings, so 
as to throw a little soil all about them, 
and make it go two inches deep. If I 
didn’t break all the crust, I would hoe 
what was left with a potato fork. If 
you will go twice a week through your 
fruit, and always as soon after rain as 
the ground is dry, it will keep your soil 
dark and moist by taking moisture from 
below, and by not allowing the soil to 
give it up to the air.” 
“ The R. N.-Y. gave farmers of the dry 
West a motto the other day, which I 
shall give you ; you can tack it upon 
your barn door, and when you think you 
have stirred your ground enough stir it 
again. It is, “ everlastingly stirred.” 
At the Marion County Institute last 
winter, our nurserymen spoke most 
earnestly of the wonderful drought- 
resisting power of the dust mulch. They 
ran through the nursery rows often with 
a shallow cultivator all last summer, 
and said that when they brushed away 
the dust, the ground was damp and cool. 
Another neighbor remarked the other 
day as we talked at my farm, two miles 
south of his, that “You fellows have had 
more rain down here than we had ; your 
corn is up and mine has been planted a 
month and scarcely a spire has come 
up.” 
1 said, “We have scarcely had the dust 
laid this spring, but we broke early and 
harrowed every morning what was 
plowed the day before.” 
Ground broken very fine and mellow 
this spring, and worked down at once, 
held moisture remarkably well. We 
had to plant most of our crop again, ou 
account of frost and worms ; but the 
ground seemed remarkably moist for so 
dry a season. We got about inch of 
rain last May, in very light showers 
which disappeared the next day ; while 
the average for 20 years is some 4% 
inches. We are some 10 inches short 
for the first five months of this year. 
Can’t we learn a lesson from this fact of 
our seed beds being so moist ? Do not 
farmers generally plow and work ground 
a little too wet in the spring ? During 
summer when the dry weather strikes 
them, the soil is open, cloddy, and rough, 
so that it dries out badly. The ground 
broke the driest last April that I have 
ever known it for the time of year, and 
our seed beds are in the finest condition 
as to tilth and moisture ever known fol¬ 
lowing so long a drought. 
In our Burr oak black land we find 
that, in spite of constant tilth, the seed 
bed dries much deeper than in our clay 
ground. The soil is coarse, not cloddy, 
but coarse grained like peas piled to¬ 
gether, and admits the hot air too 
freely. The dust mulch of the clay 
ground almost entirely prevents evap¬ 
oration. 
All farmers remember that heavy 
rains usually compact our seed bed very 
much during the spring, and we have to 
lift it with cultivators. It jumps and 
spouts up the plows, and is left very 
rough, scaly and open. Nature gener¬ 
ally comes to our rescue with frequent 
rains ; but the crop is often damaged by 
our shabby tillage. 
Let us take a lesson from the typical 
seed bed of 1895, when it broke mellow 
and lively in April, and easily worked 
into a uniform mass of homogenous 
parts, like an onion bed from top to 
bottom and stayed mellow and loose—an 
ideal seed bed for us to strive to copy in 
future years. e. h. c. 
Carmel, Ind. 
Do you want a good mowing machine? 
If so, we can tell you how to get one for 
a few hours’ work, 
Live Stock Matters. 
FORKFULS OF FACTS. 
Dog Fertilizer. — A writer in the 
Louisiana Planter, tells of a man who 
fertilized an orchard with dogs. His 
hog died and in order to make the car¬ 
cass most useful, he proceeded as fol¬ 
lows : 
I put 50 pounds of his carcass to each tree, as 
far as it would go. The following morning my 
orchard was turned into a dog kennel. I brought 
out my trusty Winchester and buried a dog at the 
roots of each of these 49 trees. 
A good, lusty dog or cat planted near a 
thrifty tree, will put a surprising amount 
of energy into it. 
Cotton-Seed Butter.. -Mr. A. M. Soule 
ot the Texas Station, tells Hoard’s Dairy¬ 
man about that Station’s experiments 
with butter made from cows fed on 
cotton-seed meal. He says : 
1. Cotton seed increases and maintains the milk 
flow. 2. It maintains the per cent of fat in milk. 
3. It enables churning to be done at higher tem¬ 
perature, thus largely taking the place of ice. 4. 
It renders the butter harder to color, salt evenly 
and print satisfactorily. 5. It gives the butter a 
more greasy appearance, a stiff, waxy consist¬ 
ency, and a flat and somewhat tallowy taste. 
We still believe that the only suitable 
time to feed cotton-seed meal, is while 
the cows are at pasture, or while eating 
good ensilage. 
Barren Cows.—I have a good grade 
Durham cow, four years old this spring, 
that has had two calves (one at two years 
and one at three years). I cannot get 
her with calf again, and as she is a good 
cow, I do not like to part with her. I 
have had to sell three others for the same 
reason. They have always been in good 
condition, and I am at a loss to know the 
cause. I pastured on rye two and three 
years ago, and have been told by some 
that that is the cause. I have been feed¬ 
ing chop stuff this winter, with a very 
small amount of rye. Is there likely to 
be any cause for it in the green rye or 
the grain itself ? H. j. c. 
Jeddo, Mich. 
It. N.-Y.—Will those who have been 
troubled in this way give their experi¬ 
ence ? 
(Continued on next page.) 
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