OCR Text |
Show Soils Need Kit for Total Crop Growth Increasing Depth of ileration Boosts Yield "Stuffy" soils that have little or no oxygen available to the plant roots that grow in them just are not able to support high crop yields. Hard working plant roots need oxygen oxy-gen if they are to do a good job of supporting the plant and collecting plant food for the above ground parts. Working with muck soil, N. K. Ellis, Purdue university, and Richard Rich-ard Morris, U. S. soil conservation service, found that when liberal quantities of oxygen penetrated the soil only four inches the yield of red beets, sweet corn, onions and Chip- 'I It may pay to go deeper than this plow is set. pewa potatoes was small. When the soils were "ventilated" to 18 Inches the yields increased as much as 10 fold. When the depth of aeration was increased to 36 inches the yield of some of the crops was increased. The yield of carrots went from 3 to 33 tons per acre when the depth of aeration was increased from 4 to 18 inches. Sweet corn yield went from 3 to 4.75 tons; onions from 45 to 275 50-pound bags; red beets from 3.75 to 13.5 tons and potatoes from about 12 to 258 bushels per acre. Oxygen in the soil for the use of the plant roots is the logical reason for the difference in crop yields. Adequate plant food was available on all the plots. Rainfall during the season was sufficient to eliminate water as a limiting crop production factor on the muck soils. |