The trail blazers . es, by improved methods of tillage, the depart-ment has greatly increased the productivity of the soil. On land that would notgrow alfalfa or field peas sown broadcast, because of lack of moisture, it has demon-strated that both crops can be grown in cultivated rows, with n * e rJ~ advantages over the wheat crop commonly grown. It has shown that rotations of fodder corn, field peas, or alfalfa sownin drilled rows, with wheat, will save summer fallowing once in three years. Ithas adapted ten varieties of choice small grains and five varieties of potatoes tosuccessful culture
The trail blazers . es, by improved methods of tillage, the depart-ment has greatly increased the productivity of the soil. On land that would notgrow alfalfa or field peas sown broadcast, because of lack of moisture, it has demon-strated that both crops can be grown in cultivated rows, with n * e rJ~ advantages over the wheat crop commonly grown. It has shown that rotations of fodder corn, field peas, or alfalfa sownin drilled rows, with wheat, will save summer fallowing once in three years. Ithas adapted ten varieties of choice small grains and five varieties of potatoes tosuccessful culture on these lands, and has secured regular yields of forage cornas high as sixteen tons of silage to the acre. When the branch experiment station of Eastern Oregon was established in1911 at Burns, on sage-brush prairie where the annual rainfall averages but llj^inches, our agronomists, by a series of borings through the surface soil, whichwas devoid of perceptible moisture to a depth of six to nine feet, found that 14. AGRONOMY EXPERIMENTAL ACTIVITIES ON THE COLLEGE AND BRANCH STATION FARMS an underground flow of water lay at a depth of ten to twenty feet below the surface. They promptly undertook the task of driving down the surface moisture, conserved by careful tillage, to meet this under- „ ground water table, which would thus become available, Conservation. & through capillary movement of moisture, for the nourish-ment of field crops. Within two years from the time this method was put intopractice, 80 per cent of the two-hundrea acre tract so treated had respondedadequately to the treatment; the surface moisture had joined the undergroundmoisture, and the crops were noticeably improved. This discovery gives promiseof remarkable achievements. Since vast tracts of tillable sage-brush land in CentralOregon are undoubtedly underlaid with an accessible water table like that on thestation farm, similar methods of tillage promise to bring about similar results,transforming, throu
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1910, bookidtrailblazers, bookyear1915
