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Show TILLED GROUND KEEPS MOIST Fact Should Encourage Those on Seemingly Very Dry Sod Land Keep Shallow Mulch. Moisture follows tillage to an extent and often under favorable conditions to a very considerable extent. This has been distinctly proven by the records rec-ords of the Montana substations, where the increase of moisture from almost none to enough to mature a fair crop has not been unusual. Tillage also seems to take the wild out of some of our driest western" land and enables one to do much bet-tei bet-tei with trees than at first. Touching upon this point, the Denver Field and Farm says: "The dryness of sod or breaking compared with well tilled "ind is not generally known by newcomers into tne shortgrass country. It is for this reason principally why the Buffalo Buf-falo sod is not so good for trees, alfal-la, alfal-la, garden, etc., as land that has been deeply and thoroughly tilled. We have to go through a process of .civilizing .civ-ilizing the soil before it will take kindly kind-ly to cultivated crops. The aridity of sod has often been very discouraging to newcomers for judging f ro n the lack of moisture in that the only land they have they are apt to think the country drier than it really is. To illustrate this, one need not go farther farth-er than digging down into the sod of a roadway in any country during a prolonged dry spell and digging into the earth in the nearest plowed or cultivated cul-tivated field. The first will be found as dry as a bone and baked so it can hardly be penetrated with a sharp spade, while the cultivated to'l, though possibly not a rod distant, will- be loose and moist. This fact should encourage en-courage those on seemingly very dry sod land to know that when once it is deeply and well tilled, particularly if pains be taken to keep the surface worked into a shallow mulch, many more times the moisture will be available avail-able than during the first year or two after cultivation. In favorable seasons sea-sons trees do very well put out in sod land, and gardens make a very encouraging en-couraging showing on back-setting, but Jiore often tree or shrubbery planting and garden making on new land la very discouraging. It nearly always pays better to first get the land thoroughly thor-oughly worked good and deep before attempting much in these lines and we would not overlook rough fall-plowing for anything." |