Show Q itu ST NDE K M U nothing can prevent formation if drouth lasts long cannot bo broken up without destroying ying crop but can be rendered harmless by right kind of plowing every dry year some one asks what can wo we do when a crust forms under mulch nothing can prevent this crust forming it if the drouth lasts long enough writes R parsons in dry farming arming Fl bulletin the top inch of the mulch dries first then the second then the third and then the inevitable crust begins to form underneath and becomes thicker and thicker with every day of drouth we cannot break up this crust without destroying the crop but we can render this 1 cru crust 8 t p perfectly harmless by the right kind of plowing and that Is all that Is n necessary e c 0 s sa r the formation of this crust depends on an two different factors the drouth about and the moisture moister 0 C conditions ons b below 0 people sometimes talk and write in magazines about the dry farmer making a cistern for moisture and putting the lid on and so forth as if he had all the water he could handle but the fact of the matter Is we can wet up our land by conserving moisture to a certain percentage to a certain limit only which Is determined by the capillarity il of the soil in question quest lon and above that limit which is more or less constant it is impossible to raise it as long as there is a dry subsoil below which is the true condition of tb the dry farm soil what I 1 mean is this when a storm comes the water goes down by capillarity or gravity or both combined until it is too diffused to go any fur further capillarity ceases for the time being until another storm comes and starts it again then it goes down again until it stops for lack of water now if we melce make a test of this soil for moisture a day or so after a storm when capillarity has awed working we find we have no more moisture in the soil than we had bad before the percentage is the same but it has gone down further we are obtaining a greater depth of moist ground some farmers plow shallow owing to a misconception of this action of moisture they expect the moisture to rise by capillarity to moisten their crust and hold tho the drouth at bay when capillarity is already exhausted by the downward pull of gravity after making several hundred tests in all varieties of soil during the I 1 last 30 years I 1 have been unwillingly forced to the inevitable conclusion that capillarity as a help to the dry farmer Is bringing up moisture from i the subsoil to the roots of his crops Is a negligible quantity on true dry farm land that Is not sub irrigated we all allow however that capillarity works very strongly sometimes for a few days on the top three or four inches after wet weather before the moisture has diffused downward and we can make use of this knowledge for seed germination by using the press drill which will draw the moisture to the packed seed rows without packing and baking the whole flold sinto the moisture does not rise to moisten our crust except very slightly by distillation it Is clear that the boat best thing we can do Is to go down after the moisture the only way to do this Is to plow deeply not any six or seven inches but eight nine ten or twelve |