. Effective farming; a text-book for American schools. Agriculture. Soils 47 very valuable for cropping purposes, as fertile soil from higher localities has generally been washed down to the low areas for a long time before draining. If the place is swampy, vegeta- tion may have been accumulating and decaying for years, thus forming muck, an extremely valuable soil type for certain crops. There are two methods employed in land drainage, (1) the open-ditch method, and (2) the underdrainage method. Open-ditch drainage. — When land is so level that very little grade from the beginning of the ditc
. Effective farming; a text-book for American schools. Agriculture. Soils 47 very valuable for cropping purposes, as fertile soil from higher localities has generally been washed down to the low areas for a long time before draining. If the place is swampy, vegeta- tion may have been accumulating and decaying for years, thus forming muck, an extremely valuable soil type for certain crops. There are two methods employed in land drainage, (1) the open-ditch method, and (2) the underdrainage method. Open-ditch drainage. — When land is so level that very little grade from the beginning of the ditch to the outlet is possible, open-ditch drainage is employed to lower the water-level. Fig. 19 shows such a ditch on level land in New Jersey. Open ditches are objec- tionable and are not used when under- drainage can be em- ployed. They oc- cupy land that, if underdrained, could be tilled, they inter- fere with the tillage and other cropping operations of the farm, the ditch banks promote the growth of weeds, and the ditches must be cleaned out periodically, which is an expense not necessary with underdrains. However, with all these objections, open ditches are useful and can often be em- ployed profitably where underdrainage is not practicable. Large areas of level muck land can often be effectively drained by means of open ditches that could not possibly be drained by any other method. This is the condition of the land shown in Fig. Fig. 19. An open drainage ditch in muck soil in New Please note that these images are extracted from scanned page images that may have been digitally enhanced for readability - coloration and appearance of these illustrations may not perfectly resemble the original Sampson, Harry Oscar, 1879-. New York, Macmillan
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1910, booksubjectagriculture, bookyear
