Agriculture for Beginners by Daniel Harvey Hill (ebook reader 7 inch .TXT) 📕
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The story applies as well to-day as it did when it was first told. Thorough culture of the soil, frequent and intelligent tillage—these are the foundations of soil-restoration.
Along with good tillage must go crop-rotation and good drainage. A supply of organic matter will prevent heavy rains from washing the soil and carrying away plant food. Drainage will aid good tillage in allowing air to circulate between the soil particles and in arranging plant food so that plants can use it.
But we must add humus, or vegetable matter, to the soil. You remember that the virgin soils contained a great deal of vegetable matter and plant food, but by the continuous growing of crops like wheat, corn, and cotton, and by constant shallow tillage, both humus and plant food have been used up. Consequently much of our cultivated soil to-day is hard and dead.
There are three ways of adding humus and plant food to this lifeless land: the first way is to apply barnyard manure (to adopt this method means that livestock raising must be a part of all farming); the second way is to adopt rotation of crops, and frequently to plow under crops like clover and cowpeas; the third way is to apply commercial fertilizers.
To summarize: if we want to make our soil better year by year, we must cultivate well, drain well, and in the most economical way add humus and plant food.
EXPERIMENT
Select a small area of ground at your home and divide it into four sections, as shown in the following sketch:
Fig. 13.
On Section A apply barnyard manure; on Section B apply commercial fertilizers; on Section C apply nothing, but till well; on Section D apply nothing, and till very poorly.
A, B, and C should all be thoroughly plowed and harrowed. Then add barnyard manure to A, commercial fertilizers to B, and harrow A, B, and C at least four times until the soil is mellow and fine. D will most likely be cloddy, like many fields that we often see. Now plant on each plat some crop like cotton, corn, or wheat. When the plats are ready to harvest, measure the yield of each and determine whether the increased yield of the best plats has paid for the outlay for tillage and manure. The pupil will be much interested in the results obtained from the first crop.
Now follow a system of crop-rotation on the plats. Clover can follow corn or cotton or wheat; and cowpeas, wheat. Then determine the yield of each plat for the second crop. By following these plats for several years, and increasing the number, the pupils will learn many things of greatest value.
SECTION VII. MANURING THE SOILIn the early days of our history, when the soil was new and rich, we were not compelled to use large amounts of manures and fertilizers. Yet our histories speak of an Indian named Squanto who came into one of the New England colonies and showed the first settlers how, by putting a fish in each hill of corn, they could obtain larger yields.
If people in those days, with new and fertile soils, could use manures profitably, how much more ought we to use them in our time, when soils have lost their virgin fertility, and when the plant food in the soil has been exhausted by years and years of cropping!
To sell year after year all the produce grown on land is a sure way to ruin it. If, for example, the richest land is planted every year in corn, and no stable or farmyard manure or other fertilizer returned to the soil, the land so treated will of course soon become too poor to grow any crop. If, on the other hand, clover or alfalfa or corn or cotton-seed meal is fed to stock, and the manure from the stock returned to the soil, the land will be kept rich. Hence those farmers who do not sell such raw products as cotton, corn, wheat, oats, and clover, but who market articles made from these raw products, find it easier to keep their land fertile. For illustration: if instead of selling hay, farmers feed it to sheep and sell meat and wool; if instead of selling cotton seed, they feed its meal to cows, and sell milk and butter; if instead of selling stover, they feed it to beef cattle, they get a good price for products and in addition have all the manure needed to keep their land productive and increase its value each year.
Fig. 14. Relation of Humus to Growth of Corn Left, clay subsoil;
Center, same, with fertilizer;
Right, same, with humus
If we wish to keep up the fertility of our lands we should not allow anything to be lost from our farms. All the manures, straw, roots, stubble, healthy vines—in fact everything decomposable—should be plowed under or used as a top-dressing. Especial care should be taken in storing manure. It should be watchfully protected from sun and rain. If a farmer has no shed under which to keep his manure, he should scatter it on his fields as fast as it is made.
Fig. 15. The Cotton Plant with and without Food In left top pot, no plant food; in left bottom pot, plant food scanty; in both right pots, all elements of plant food present
He should understand also that liquid manure is of more value than solid, because that important plant food, nitrogen, is found almost wholly in the liquid portion. Some of the phosphoric acid and considerable amounts of the potash are also found in the liquid manure. Hence economy requires that none of this escape either by leakage or by fermentation. Sometimes one can detect the smell of ammonia in the stable. This ammonia is formed by the decomposition of the liquid manure, and its loss should be checked by sprinkling some floats, acid phosphate, or muck over the stable floor.
Many farmers find it desirable to buy fertilizers to use with the manure made on the farm. In this case it is helpful to understand the composition, source, and availability of the various substances composing commercial fertilizers. The three most valuable things in commercial fertilizers are nitrogen, potash, and phosphoric acid.
The nitrogen is obtained from (1) nitrate of soda mined in Chile, (2) ammonium sulphate, a by-product of the gas works, (3) dried blood and other by-products of the slaughter-houses, and (4) cotton-seed meal. Nitrate of soda is soluble in water and may therefore be washed away before being used by plants. For this reason it should be applied in small quantities and at intervals of a few weeks.
Potash is obtained in Germany, where it is found in several forms. It is put on the market as muriate of potash, sulphate of potash, kainite, which contains salt as an impurity, and in other impure forms. Potash is found also in unleached wood ashes.
Phosphoric acid is found in various rocks of Tennessee, Florida, and South Carolina, and also to a large extent in bones. The rocks or bones are usually treated with sulphuric acid. This treatment changes the phosphoric acid into a form ready for plant use.
These three kinds of plant food are ordinarily all that we need to supply. In some cases, however, lime has to be added. Besides being a plant food itself, lime helps most soils by improving the structure of the grains; by sweetening the soil, thereby aiding the little living germs called bacteria; by hastening the decay of organic matter; and by setting free the potash that is locked up in the soil.
CHAPTER II THE SOIL AND THE PLANT SECTION VIII. ROOTSFig. 16. Root-Hairs
on a Radish
Fig. 17. A Slice of a Root
Highly magnified
You have perhaps observed the regularity of arrangement in the twigs and branches of trees. Now pull up the roots of a plant, as, for example, sheep sorrel, Jimson weed, or some other plant. Note the branching of the roots. In these there is no such regularity as is seen in the twig. Trace the rootlets to their finest tips. How small, slender, and delicate they are! Still we do not see the finest of them, for in taking the plant from the ground we tore the most delicate away. In order to see the real construction of a root we must grow one so that we may examine it uninjured. To do this, sprout some oats in a germinator or in any box in which one glass side has been arranged and allow the oats to grow till they are two or more inches high. Now examine the roots and you will see very fine hairs, similar to those shown in the accompanying figure, forming a fuzz over the surface of the roots near the tips. This fuzz is made of small hairs standing so close together that there are often as many as 38,200 on a single square inch. Fig. 17 shows how a root looks when it has been cut crosswise into what is known as a cross section. The figure is much increased in size. You can see how the root-hairs extend from the root in every direction. Fig. 18 shows a single root-hair very greatly enlarged, with particles of sand sticking to it.
Fig. 18. A Root-Hair
with Particles of Soil
sticking to it
These hairs are the feeding-organs of the roots, and they are formed only near the tips of the finest roots. You see that the large, coarse roots that you are familiar with have nothing to do with absorbing plant food from the soil. They serve merely to conduct the sap and nourishment from the root-hairs to the tree.
When you apply manure or other fertilizer to a tree, remember that it is far better to supply the fertilizer to the roots that are at some distance from the trunk, for such roots are the real feeders. The plant food in the manure soaks into the soil and immediately reaches the root-hairs. You can understand this better by studying the distribution of the roots of an orchard tree, shown in Fig. 19. There you can see that the fine tips are found at a long distance from the main trunk.
Fig. 19. Distribution of Apple-Tree Roots
You can now readily see why it is that plants usually wilt when they are transplanted. The fine, delicate root-hairs are then broken off, and the plant can but poorly keep up its food and water supply until new hairs have been formed. While these are forming, water has been evaporating from the leaves, and consequently the plant does not get enough moisture and therefore droops.
Fig. 21.
Alfalfa Root
Would you not conclude that it is very poor farming to till deeply any crop after the roots have extended between the rows far enough to be cut by the plow or cultivator? In cultivating between corn rows, for example, if you find that you are disturbing fine roots, you may be sure that you are breaking off millions of root-hairs from each plant and hence are doing harm rather than good. Fig. 20 shows how the roots from one corn row intertangle with those of another. You see at a glance how many of these roots would be destroyed by deep cultivation. Stirring the upper inch of soil when the plants are well grown is sufficient tillage and does no injury to the roots.
Fig. 20. Corn Roots reach from Row to Row
A deep soil is much better than a shallow soil, as its depth makes it just
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