OCR Text |
Show DEFINITION OF DRY FARMING Principal Things Are Water Conservation, Con-servation, Drought Resistant Crops and System of Rotation. Dry farming simply means good fanning. There is no place in the United States where crops are not reduced to some extent every year on account of an insufficient supply of water. The principal things then in dry farming are water conservation, the proper selection of drought resistant re-sistant crops, and a wise system of crop rotation, large proportion of the land devoted to forage and feed crops, with a sufficient number of animals to consume all the cheap roughage produced pro-duced on the farm. In controlling the water supply the first thing to do is to get the water into the ground and then prevent percolation per-colation and evaporation. The soil will absorb water more rapidly and hold a greater quantity if it is properly prop-erly tilled. Hence, fall plowing of the land, if it does not blow, is advisable. advis-able. The plowing shcaid be deep and thorough. Since organic matter will hold much more water than an equal volume of soil particles, the addition of vegetable matter Is very important. After the water is in the soil much of the exaporation can be prevented by frequent and shallow cultivation. An endeavor should be made to keep the loose soil mulch, but not a dust blanket, as it is frequently called. Dry farming consists of: First, tilling till-ing so that the water will be absorbed by the soil; second, a good selection of drought resistant crops and the proper utilization of the crops. There have been several good bulletins bul-letins published on this subject. Most of these bulletins can be secured free of charge by writing to the different stations mentioned below: Bulletin No. 112, Utah Experiment Station, I.ogan, Utah. Bulletin No. 61, New Mexico Experiment Experi-ment Station, Agricultural College, New Mexico. Montana Experiment Station, Boze-raan, Boze-raan, Mont. United States department of Agriculture, Agri-culture, Washington, C. C. |