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Show DRY FARMING POINTS Potatoes Are Good Crop for Rotating Ro-tating With Grain. System of Rotation Will Produce Four Crops In Five Years Land Must Bo Handled at Right Time and Not Neglected. The climate has not changed, nor will it change, but man has and will continue to do so. And why is he changing? Because there are so many devoting their lives to finding out facts and giving them to the human hu-man race in a concrete form. Men like. King, Campbell and Hil-gard Hil-gard and others, too numerous to mention, men-tion, have practically devoted their lives to the building of a new agriculture. agri-culture. But for such men as these, we would not be tilling the deserts of the west and making paying crops in years like the present one. Campbell, the great apostle of dry farming. Is the first man that ever gave us a complete com-plete set of rules for dry farming, and the writer wishes to state that anyone any-one who will take his book on dry fanning and apply the rules laid down by him, will succeed, writes Norman E. Holden, in the Scientific Farmer. Of course, there are always local conditions con-ditions that will modify them. One of Professor Campbell's rules Is ; to always summer till and have two season's moisture for one crop. The writer has found that system of rotating rotat-ing will produce four crops In five years, but in rotating one must be equipped to handle the land at the right time and not neglect it. If one Intends rotating, if it is a grain crop, the disk should follow Immediately behind be-hind the harvester. This should be done with summer tillage, but it is not absolutely necessary as when a crop is to be planted the following year. After the disking, the land should be plowed, packed and harrowed. har-rowed. The following spring it should be double disked and harrowed sufficiently to make a good seed bed. Potatoes are a good crop to plant for rotating with grain. One should plant an Intertilled crop after grain. Canadian field peas are a good crop If they are planted in rows and cultivated. culti-vated. Corn is another and, where it can be grown, is probably the best Here is a good rotation for one starting start-ing on sod: First year, plant small grain (preferably winter wheat or rye) ; second year, the same, then summer till the ground; next crop, potatoes, po-tatoes, then Durum wheat Of course this rotation proposition must be carefully care-fully looked into and if there is not sufficient moisture In the ground to warrant a crop, it is better to summer till. The moisture in the ground can be ascertained by taking samples as far down as the moisture goes and weighing the same. Place the damp soil in an oven after it has been weighed, dry it, and weigh again. This will give the amount of moisture. It Is not advisable to crop unless there Is at least four inches of water stored. Another, and one of the most important impor-tant of all conditions to be understood, under-stood, is that the more ideal conditions condi-tions of the soil for plant life, the less moisture it will take to grow the crop. That the year 1910 has demonstrator demonstra-tor that dry farming is not a myth, is evidenced by the results obtained. The history of dry farming in Beaverhead Beaver-head county has been a course in which something of real merit had all those forces to contend with that have their origin in self-interest, lack of knowledge, etc. However, this season has proven to the most skeptical that dry farming is something real, a line of agriculture that is as safe to embark em-bark into as the irrigation system. This is a rather bold assertion. Do the facts sustain it? |