Crop (anatomy)

“ A field in which we cultivate the same plant for several successive years becomes barren for that plant in a period varying with the nature of the soil: in one field it will be in three, in another in seven, in a third in twenty, in a fourth in a hundred years. One field bears wheat, and no peas; another beans or turnips, but no tobacco; a third gives a plentiful crop of turnips, but will not bear clover. What is the reason that a field loses its fertility for one plant, the same which at first flourished there? What is the reason one kind of plant succeeds in a field where another fails? ”

“ On some kinds of food they thrive,—fed with others, they sicken or die. The soil must therefore be prepared for their special growth.
In an artificial rotation of crops, we only follow nature. One crop extracts from the soil a certain quantity of all the inorganic constituents of plants; but some of these in much larger proportions than others. A second crop carries off in preference a larger quantity of those substances which the former had left; and thus it is clearly seen, both why an abundant manuring may so alter the constitution of the soil, as to enable it to grow almost any crop ”

“ The materials in various houses differ just as the elements in different kinds of plants vary. A man can decide what he will build of; Nature has decided forever what she will build of. She will construct a stalk of corn or wheat with its grain out of essentially the same materials to the end of time. Now suppose one or more of these necessary ingredients is limited in the soil, or has been taken from it by a succession of crops, what rational hope can we have for a good crop unless we place the absent material in the ground, and also put it there in a form suitable for the use of the plant? ”

“ When we see how important as signs of water many plants can be, why may we not find other plants denoting the minerals which they especially relish as food or condiment?
Of more account than gold or silver are the harvests of wheat and corn that ripen in our fields. There the special appetites of plants have much more than merely curious interest for the farmer. He knows full well that his land is but a larder which serves him best when not part but all its stores are in demand. Hence his crop “rotation,” his succession of wheat to clover, of grass to both. ”

“ But if the maiden crop threatens to be a heavy one it should certainly be lessened, as the following year there would be little crop, and much growth of superfluous wood, and an over heavy crop the succeeding year, and so on continuously. ”

“ Before the wheat, or any grain soever can appear, this grass has shot up so high and so thick as absolutely to choke it. Suppose it was possible to hoe or weed it, the grass will again overtop the grain before it is an inch from the ground. Say it could be again hoed or cleared, by this time the rains are so continual, the black earth becomes a perfect mire. The rain increases, and the grain rots without producing any crop. ”

“ The greatest Difference of having an equal Crop from a small Number of strong Plants, and from a great Number of weak ones, is, that the Soil is vastly less exhausted by the former than by the latter, not only from the latter’s exhausting more in proportion to their Number when young, and whilst each of them consumes as much Nourishment as each of the small Number ”

“ Every one of these properties of the fertile soil, and consequently every one of the conditions necessary for the growth and development of plant roots, is influenced in some way by every operation performed on the soil, whether it be plowing, harrowing, cultivating, applying manure, growing crops, harvesting, or anything else, and the thoughtful farmer will frequently ask himself the question: "How is this going to effect the fertility of my soil or the conditions necessary for profitable crop production?" ”

“ Everywhere else there have been such results as to prove that it ought to become, in greater or less degree, a staple crop on practically every farm, dependent only upon more energy, faith and skill on the part of the farmer, and a natural acclimation. ”

“ But if you will plow such land in the fall, and expose it to the disintegrating effects of the frost, and plow it again in the spring, and let the sun and air act upon it, more or less of the organic matter in the soil will be decomposed, and the nitrogen rendered soluble. And then if you sow this land to wheat after a good summer-fallow, you will stand a chance of having a great crop. ”

“ Water is supplied from the sky, or from springs and streams; and little more than the most ordinary capacity for observation is required to determine when it is present in sufficient quantity, when in baleful excess. But who, unaided by Science, can decide whether the soil does or does not contain the elements requisite for the luxuriant growth and perfect development of Wheat, or Fruit, or Grass, or Beets, or Apples? Who knows, save as he blindly infers from results, what mineral ingredients of this or that crop are deficient in given field, and what are present in excess? ”

“ The surface soil may be so far exhausted of one [Pg 60] inorganic substance, that it cannot afford it in sufficient quantity during the present season to bring a given crop to healthy maturity, and yet may, by natural processes, be so far supplied again, during the intermediate growth of certain other crops, as to be prepared in a future season fully to supply all the wants of the same crop, and to yield a plentiful harvest. ”

“ That the more successive Crops are planted in wide Intervals, and often ho’d, the better the Ground does maintain them; the last Crop is still the best, without Dung, or changing the Sort of Plant; and this is visible in Parts of the same Field, where some Part has a first, some other Part a second, the rest a third Crop growing all together at the same time; which seems to prove, that as the Earth is made by this Operation to dispense or distribute her Wealth to Plants, in Proportion to the Increase of her inner Superficies (which is the Pasture of Plants) ”

“ We must conclude that the wheat can not get food enough from the soil to yield a maximum crop, not because there is not food enough in the field, but the roots of the wheat are so constituted that they can not gather it up; while clover-roots, foraging in the same soil, can find all they want. ”

“ I can of course admit that the growth of corn was, at first, accidental and unconscious, and that even after the succession of processes began to be grasped and the soil methodically cultivated the success of the crop was supposed to depend upon the propitiation of a god. ”

“ In thorough cultivation before the crop is planted, lies the secret of many a success, and in its neglect the cause of many failures. Intelligent handling of crops is in a large measure knowledge of the influence of wind and rain, sunshine and darkness, on the particular nature of the plant Delicate plants, for example, ought to be grown where buildings or forests break the force of prevailing winds. ”

“ Using these observations as a foundation, he built up a theory that plants may injure each other by the matter excreted from their roots, and that the success of crop rotation lies in preventing an undue accumulation of excreted material in the soil. ”

“ In the field of the agriculturist it is the same story. The earth which brings forth its crop of unwholesome weeds so bountifully, resists man's approaches when he strives to bring it under cultivation. Only by the most careful attention can useful grains be made to grow where the wildlings swarmed in profusion. Not only do wind and rain, blighting heat and withering cold menace the crops ”

“ Where the soil is [Pg 62] favourable, the roots can send up into the straw every thing which the healthy plant requires; when it is poorly supplied with some of those inorganic constituents which the plant desires, life may be prolonged, a stunted or unhealthy crop may be raised, in which the kind, and perhaps the quantity, of ash left in burning will necessarily be different from that left by the same species of plant grown under more favouring circumstances. ”

“ When crop after crop is taken off the first four or five inches of top earth, it tends speedily to rob it of all materials required by grass or grain. Every blade taken from the soil, takes off some portion of that soil with it.
2. Deep plowing brings up from beneath a greater amount of earth, which, when subjected to the frosts, the atmosphere, and the action of the plow, becomes fit for vegetation.
3. Summer droughts seldom injure deeply-plowed soils; certainly not to that degree that they do shallow soils. ”

“ Slabs of bed-rock and countless myriads of loose stones cover the surface of the ground: by blasting and patient excavation a certain proportion of these are removed, and the intervening patches of earth are dug by hand, the first harvest being represented by a scanty crop of wheat sprouting in the interstices of the rock paving. ”

“ The older the country has become, as a rule, the more obnoxious has been the vegetation that the soil has produced of its own accord. But there has been in my recollection, which goes back more than seventy years, a great many changes in the crops of vegetation on those lands, showing to my satisfaction that there is an inherent potency in nature, in rich soil that will cover itself every year with a growth of some kind. If it is not cultivated and made to produce fruit, vegetables, and cereals, it will nevertheless produce a crop of some kind. ”

“ We raise a great amount of wheat, and crop our land year after year with the same crop. This is a pernicious practice for our land. It would be much better to introduce a rotation of crops suited to the land and the climate. ”

“ We have not had rain enough to wet the earth one inch for three months, every vegetable is burnt up, our cattle starving, the springs in many places dried up, and still no prospects of rain. The earth is so parched that we can sow no fall crop; no turnips, no potatoes, no cabbages. Our crops of cotton and corn are only a half crop. ”

“ Good Soil Conditions.—When the grasses and clovers desired for a sod are sown with small grain, there is competition between them and the grain crop for fertility, moisture, and light. The grain crop is the one that will produce the income the following summer, and naturally is given right of way. The amount of seed is used that experience teaches is best for a maximum yield of grain. Usually this gives a thicker stand of plants than is best for the tiny grass and clover plants that often are struggling for existence down under the taller grain. ”

“ Vegetation in this clime is very abundant; but there are some fearful drawbacks to our reaping its fruits. We may have a good crop of grain on the ground to-day, and to-morrow it may be all cut down by a hail-storm, or destroyed by a blight, or swept away by a flood. ”

“ The land being exceedingly fertile, never failed to produce a crop of vegetation, and when one variety did appear and cover the entire surface as thick as it could grow for a few years, it seemed to exhaust the quality of the soil that produced that kind, and that variety would give way and something new come up. ”

“ There is another distinction, too, to be made; where the soil is dense, cretaceous, or moist, there should be six modii of wheat or winter-wheat to the jugerum, but where the land is loose, dry, and prolific, four will be enough. A meagre soil, too, if the crop is not very thinly sown, will produce a diminutive, empty ear. Rich lands give a number of stalks to each grain, and yield a thick crop from only a light sowing. ”

“ The soil being turned up to the action of the sun and air, becomes enlivened, and better fitted for producing vegetation. An acre of land yielding a ton of hay, at the usual season of ploughing greensward contains more than twelve tons of vegetable matter, consisting of the roots and lops of grass, and other vegetable remains upon the surface. Such a method of ploughing, then, as will be best calculated to secure for the benefit of the crop, this mass of enriching substance, the farmer should not hesitate to adopt. ”

“ In the afternoons and evenings, we took breezy gallops through the forests, along the boundary sward of the fields, across the rich black soil of that third of the land which, in the "three-field" system of cultivation, is allowed to lie fallow after it has borne a crop of winter grain, rye, and one of summer grain, oats. ”

“ It was early recognized that the results of such analyses bear no intelligible relation to the productive capacity of soils; for pulverized rocks of many kinds, or volcanic ashes freshly ejected and notoriously incapable of supporting plant growth, might be made to give exactly the same composition. The amounts of plant-food ingredients thus shown might be several hundreds or thousands of times greater than what one crop would take from the soil, and yet not an ear of grain could be produced on the material. ”

“ When the crop is turned under the soil, it decomposes, and the carbon, as well as the mineral ingredients obtained from the subsoil, are deposited in the surface soil, and become of use to succeeding crops. ”

“ Suppose, then, that we grow Cabbage, or Cauliflower, or Broccoli, on the same plot of ground, one crop following the other for a long series of years, and never refresh the soil with manure, it must be evident that we shall, some day or other, find the crop fail through the exhaustion of the soil of its available sulphur, phosphates, lime, or potash. ”