. Agriculture, its fundamental principles. Agriculture. SOIL IMPROVEMENT 85 not readily available in it. Its crops suffer from both wet and dry weather, — from wet because water stands on it and drowns the plants, from dry because water does not rise freely in it and because it' becomes so hard that roots cannot penetrate it. How can its faults be corrected? If it be low, it needs to be drained to remove surplus water. Then it needs to be made more open and porous by apphcations of lime, green manures, and coarse stable manure. It is espe- cially important for clay soils to be worked when in p
. Agriculture, its fundamental principles. Agriculture. SOIL IMPROVEMENT 85 not readily available in it. Its crops suffer from both wet and dry weather, — from wet because water stands on it and drowns the plants, from dry because water does not rise freely in it and because it' becomes so hard that roots cannot penetrate it. How can its faults be corrected? If it be low, it needs to be drained to remove surplus water. Then it needs to be made more open and porous by apphcations of lime, green manures, and coarse stable manure. It is espe- cially important for clay soils to be worked when in proper condition, for they are injured by tillage when too wet or too dry. They are improved bv being ' put down ' in grass, both " . Clay soil plowed when to avoid tillage and to increase their store of too dry; it is hard and plant food. Clay soils retain manures and fer- cioddy. tilizers better than do sandy ones. Improving Loams. — A loam, especially a limestone loam, is naturally a good farm soil. It can be kept so by proper tillage and by returning to it the humus and plant food removed by cropping. Reclaiming Alkali and Swamp Lands.—On alkali lands, as you have learned, there are deposits of mineral salts. These salts are brought to the surface by capillary attraction, and the rainfall is not sufficient to drain them off. Such soils need irrigation, drainage, and deep plowing to free them from these salts. Swamp soils are generally of good texture and rich in plant food; if relieved of surplus water, they arc very productive. EXERCISE I. In the exercises under Drainage, Irrigation, Tillage, Crop Rotation, Green Manures, Stable Manures, and Commercial Fertilizers, there are suggested experiments which show methods of improving 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 Soule, And
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