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Show SUCCEED BY DEEP PLOWING Majority of Failures In Dry rsrmlng May Be Directly Attributed to Shallow Methods Employed. Deep plowing Is the key to success In dry farmln. and every failure may be attributed mainly to shallow plow. Ins, and the complete evidence of this Is to be found In the history of the early settlers, for not a single deep plower ever went broke or left the country. There Is no doubt that deep plowing Is to some extent bard work but not nearly so hard as Imagination represents repre-sents it to l, and much easier In the end than surface farming which ilt plctes thi soil, w ears out the farmer and gets nowhere. There are hundreds of dry farmers or rather thousands who plow about six Inches, pack, disk, harrow and cultivate cul-tivate day and nlnht and Sundays and lone every year In wasted effort enough to keep themselves and families fam-ilies In luxury the year round. The dry farmer ha no expensive outlay, no water to pay for, no ditches to mend, no rheumatism to doctor, yet he gels Irrigation prices for every-thins, every-thins, he raises; surely he can afford to plow, and even If be Is short of horses, he ran double up with a neighbor neigh-bor to the advantage of both. We are Klad to see that deep tillage Is taking hold In the west, and several sever-al colonies and communities which have adopted It In Colorado, notably at Cathan and Union, are raising the finest of crops even In dry years, are becoming pronperoiis, making money and booming their land values In consequence. con-sequence. In a recent article coming to our notice, Mr. Cyril Hopkins advances the theory that if we plow deep and raise big crops we will exhaust the soil, says the Dakota Farmer We woulu be glad If this gentleman would tell us what to do with the soil except raise copo on It; he reminds us of the man who owned a gold mine and was afraid to develop It for fear of running out of gold. These western soils are rich In mineral min-eral plant food. In fact we might say ere made up of nothing else, and when we consider that the mineral part of plants and vegetation generally Is only shout six (6) per cent of the whole, It Is ridiculous to speak about using up the soil In this generation, so long as we conserve the humus this Is the point, and the only method ever discovered dis-covered of doing this Is deep plowing; plowing under the sod as deeply as possible at the start and after that ns much of the stubble as can be afforded. af-forded. The abandoned farms of New England, which everyone has heard bout, were ruined by shallow plowing, plow-ing, surface farming, using up of humus, hu-mus, raising a little stuff on the cream of the soil without adequate plowing; soil robbery: burning the candle at both ends. These farms are now being sought after by modern agriculturists and redeemed by deep plowing and the Introduction of humus, and some of them are In better condition today than ever. Shallow plowing destroys fertility by burning up the humus which Is found mostly on or near the surface. Deep plowing preserves the soli by burying the humus where Its gases are absorbed by the dirt Instead of the atmosphere, and thereby conserved. |
