1909 
THE RURAL* NEW-YORKER 
771 
Hope Farm Notes 
Why Cultivate.^ —Our scientific 
friends may learn from the following 
question that their teaching has failed 
to reach some farmer yet: 
Will you kindly set me right on this? 
Many times I have seen it mentioned in 
one magazine or another, that to cultivate 
crops means the keeping in of the moist- 
■ure in the earth longer, which of course is 
good for the crops. Now, this to me as to 
many of my neighbors seems ridiculous. 
“Doesn't common sense tell you,” they say 
to me, “that when you stir the soil you 
turn over the bottom part which is wet to 
the sun and wind, thereby drying out the 
moisture and not keeping it in?” It seems 
to me the same way, too. w. g. 
Connecticut. 
I think there have been more experi¬ 
ments tried to test this point than for 
any other farm operation. Our friend is 
both right and wrong. When you turn soil 
over to the air and sun you certainly dry 
it out rapidly. You must remember, how¬ 
ever, that there is more water in»the soil 
below what you turn up. The object of 
of cultivation is to hold this lower mois¬ 
ture so that it will not escape 'so rapidly. 
Water moves through the soil both down 
and up. The force of gravity or its 
weight causes it to sink down or flow 
along underground somewhat as it does 
above ground. The force of capillarity 
causes water to climb or move upward 
in the soil. It is this force which brings 
up most of the water which our crops 
use. For, as we know, after a rain the 
tendency is for the water to sink down 
into the soil. We also know that as we 
dig down the soil usually becomes wetter 
and wetter, until we strike the “water 
level,” and by digging on further we 
have a well. Good culture consists partly 
in handling the soil so this water from 
the wet soil will climb up to near the 
surface soil and be held there. 
We all know what happens when we 
put one end of a lamp wick in oil and 
light the other end. The oil rises 
through the wick to feed the flame until 
the lamp chamber is sucked dry. In like 
manner you may put one end of a coarse 
towel in a pail of water and fasten 
the other end a foot or more higher. 
Again the liquid will climb up through 
the towel to the top. Or, hold a long 
lump of sugar in a cup of coffee and 
see the brown liquid climb up through 
it, or put a brick or piece of tile in a 
pan of water and see the same thing 
happen. Now much the same thing 
goes on in the soil. The water rises 
through the little spaces between the 
soil grains—not in a straight line, but in 
zigzag lines, ever rising to the top. 
Then at the top this moisture is evap¬ 
orated by heat and passes off—a loss 
to the soil. This loss is greatest when a 
hot, hard wind is blowing, for that, like 
the flame of the lamp, sucks the mois¬ 
ture rapidly. You can easily prove this 
by taking several glass tubes and filling 
them with soil. Put the bottom end of 
each in a pan of water and watch them. 
You will see by the change of color 
that the water slowly rises in these tubes, 
and if you leave them long enough the 
water in the pan will be drawn up and 
most of it pass off as vapor at the top 
of the tubes. Go farther, and keep the 
soil at the tops of some of these tubes 
open and loose and that of others packed 
firm, and you will find a difference. The 
loosened soil* at the top will hold back 
part of the moisture, but it will still 
pass freely through the packed soil. 
T his loosened soil is what we get with 
good surface cultivation and we shall 
see why it is a good operation. The 
object is to check the evaporation at the 
surface of the ground. Suppose you cut 
the wick of the lamp. You leave one 
end in the oil, put a loose bunch of cot¬ 
ton at the other end, and then connect 
the other piece of wick to this. You 
can readily see that you check the flow 
of oil. It will rise through the wick, 
but when it strikes the cotton the flow 
will be very slow because the capillary 
tubes along which it has been traveling 
are broken or changed. Or, in the same 
way take your towel in the water and 
cut it in two and put the cotton be¬ 
tween the pieces. The upward flow will 
be checked. In much the same way 
when you cultivate the upper surface 
you change the condition of the soil, 
break up the little tubes through which 
the water is rising, and prevent its es¬ 
cape from the surface. The very fact 
that you dry out this surface soil by 
stirring it makes it a better protection 
to hold the rising water back. You lay 
a plank on the soil and the under side 
of it and the soil beneath will be moist, 
lurn it over and you dry this under¬ 
side, yet again the moisture forms under 
it. Take a layer of manure or straw as 
thick as the soil you stir in cultivating 
and the underside next the soil will be 
more or less damp, because it holds this 
rising water. Turn this mulch over and 
dry out the under side and once more 
moisture will form under it. Practically 
the same thing occurs when you cul¬ 
tivate the upper surface. There are 
many interesting things about this, but 
1 am merely trying to show you that 
“common sense” has a chance at this 
cultivation theory. 
Farm Notes. —You would hardly 
know we have had any rain, for the 
upper soil is parched and dry. No one 
would be likely to doubt the value of 
cultivation in crops if he could see our 
strawberries, which have been worked 
over 20 times, and a field nearby which 
has been worked twice only. In one 
case there is a shallow covering of dry 
soil, and below this the dark color which 
shows moisture. On the other the soil is 
hard and brick-like all the way down, 
and you can dig far down without 
changing the color. There is another 
object lesson on the hill, where in one 
young orchard we plowed under Crim¬ 
son clover, packed it down, and planted 
corn. That corn has never stopped 
growing, for that clover sod has acted 
just like a sponge to hold the moisture. 
On the same hill is another orchard 
where the clover failed. While we have 
fertilized the corn and given it good 
culture the leaves curl and show lack of 
moisture.On August 12 we 
began sowing Crimson clover in the 
corn. The soil is very dry and the clover 
may not sprout. If it does grow it may 
steal moisture from the corn, yet I de¬ 
cided to take the risk and put it in as 
well as we knew how. The rain is 
sure to come some day and we will pre¬ 
pare for the best—not the worst. 
. . . . I nearly made my horses 
balky by plowing a piece of hard sod in 
July. We finally got it over after a 
fashion, harrowed and planted fodder 
corn. It has grown only about two 
inches in three weeks, and will not give 
much fodder. Still, I am glad the work 
was done, because this drought is killing 
out that sod which was the chief reason 
for plowing it. I want it for strawber¬ 
ries next year, and the sod must be thor¬ 
oughly killed before we plant. The 
drought and the cultivation will fit it 
properly. As for potatoes, our crop 
will be fair—better than I expected in 
July. The Pyrox certainly killed the 
bugs and our vines have kept alive lon¬ 
ger than in any year when we did not 
spray. In several parts of the farm we 
did not spray early enough, as other 
work pressed too hard. In these places 
the vines are dead—while where we be¬ 
gan early and kept it up the crop will 
mature. h. w. c. 
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