Fertile soil

“ It is unnecessary to multiply analyses of fertile soils, those now given being sufficient to show their general composition. They are all characterised by the presence, in considerable quantity, of all the essential constituents of plants, in a state in which they may be readily absorbed. The absence of one or more of these substances immediately diminishes or altogether destroys the fertility of the soil ”

“ By fertility is meant the power of the soil to furnish plant-food. Fertile soil is "rich" soil. By tillage is meant frequent stirring of the soil. For example, Billy Boy and his chum each have a flower garden side by side of equal size. Each boy sows seeds from the same bag. The same sunshine and the same rains give vigor to each flower-bed alike. Billy Boy spades the soil deep and makes it fine. His chum stirs the top and leaves clods on the surface. ”

“ The fertilisation of soils is suggested partly by chemical analysis, practical experience, and geological observations. In cases where a barren soil is examined with a view to its improvement it is, when possible, compared with an extremely fertile soil in the same neighbourhood, and in a similar situation; the difference given by their analyses indicates the nature of the manure required, and the most judicious methods of cultivation ”

“ If the farmer could see his way clear to cut down the quantity of seed wheat or oats used on a fertile soil, the catch of grass would be better, but the small-grain crop is not very profitable at the best, and the owner does not like deliberately to limit it.
A greater amount of failure is due to an inadequate supply of fertility. The grass does not suffer so much from over-shading as it does from starvation, both during the growth of the grain and after harvest. The stronger grain plants appropriate the scanty stock of available fertility, and leave the grass and clover nearly helpless. ”

“ Four substances, mingled in very variable proportions, enter into the composition of fertile soil, or arable land, namely: sand or silica, clay, limestone, and humus, or vegetable mold. Each one of these ingredients separately would make but very poor soil, quite unsuited for agriculture; but united, mixed together, they fulfill the conditions necessary to fertility. Arable land generally contains all four, with the predominance sometimes of one, sometimes of another. The soil takes the name of its most abundant constituent. ”

“ It will be thus understood, that though it does not directly supply food to the plant, it ministers indirectly in a most important manner to its well-being, and that to so great an extent that it must be considered an indispensable constituent of a fertile soil. But it is important to observe that it must not be present in too large a quantity, for an excess does away with all the good effects of a smaller supply, and produces soils notorious for their infertility. ”

“ Digging and working the soil in order to keep it in an open condition is of great importance, because, to use for the second or third time the words of Sir John Lawes, "it is the physical condition of the soil, its permeability to roots, its capacity for absorbing and radiating heat, and for absorbing and retaining water, that is more important than its strictly speaking chemical condition." In other words, a moderately fertile soil, if maintained in fine physical condition, will give better results than a rich one which is in a hardened state. ”

“ If it so happens that the soil is not very fertile and there is only a limited quantity of fertilizer available, it is a good plan, instead of spreading it all over the plot, to apply it only in close proximity to the hills or drills in which the plants are growing. ”

“ This disintegration is necessary to fertility, because the roots of plants can feed only on matters dissolved from surfaces; and the more finely we pulverize the soil, the more surface we expose. For instance, the interior of a stone can furnish no food for plants; while, if it were finely crushed, it might make a fertile soil.
Any thing, tending to open the soil to exposure, facilitates the disintegration of its particles, and thereby increases its fertility. [Pg 223]
How does under-draining equalize the distribution of the fertilizing parts of the soil? ”

“ Percolation and ventilation of close compact soils can be improved by mixing lime and organic matter with them.
NOT ENOUGH WATER
In some sections of the country, particularly the arid and semi-arid sections of the West, the soil does not receive a sufficient supply of rain water for the production of profitable yearly crops. These soils are rendered unfertile by the lack of this one all important factor of fertility. They can be made fertile and productive by supplying them with sufficient water through irrigation. ”

“ To improve and again make fertile our soils, we must restore to them the phosphorus and nitrogen which have been used up in the seventy-five or more crops that we have gathered from them. This is a herculean task but this is what confronts us and I for one, believe we can accomplish it. By the proper rotation of crops, including oats, clover, cowpeas, as well as cotton and corn, and a liberal use of barn-yard manure and cotton seed fertilizer, all of the necessary elements of plant food can be restored to our worn out soil. ”

“ Actually, faster-growing crops use much less soil moisture than slower-growing ones. As early as 1882 it was determined that less water is required to produce a pound of plant material when soil is fertilized than when it is not fertilized. One experiment required 1,100 pounds of water to grow 1 pound of dry matter on infertile soil, but only 575 pounds of water to produce a pound of dry matter on rich land. Perhaps the single most important thing a water-wise gardener can do is to increase the fertility of the soil, especially the subsoil. ”

“ This luxuriance of growth does not proceed entirely from the moisture supplied by the ditches and drains; the soil naturally is uncommonly fertile: and whatever springs from it, whether planted by the hand of man, and nourished, while growing, by his attention and skill, or its spontaneous production, bears witness to this uncommon fertility. The country abounds in corn and vineyards ”

“ Finally, as the most important principle of the system, the soil should be cultivated continually, the argument being that by continuous cultivation the fertility of the soil would be increased, the water would be conserved, and as the soil became more fertile less water would be used. To accomplish such cultivation, all crops should be placed in rows rather far apart, so far indeed that a horse carrying a cultivator could walk between them. ”

“ Fertile soil, level plains, easy passage across the mountains, coal, iron, and other metals imbedded in the rocks, and a stimulating climate, all shower their blessings upon man. ”

“ The production and removal of many successive bountiful crops would not have as marked an effect on arid as on humid soils, for both yield and composition change more slowly on fertile soils. The natural extraordinarily high fertility of dry-farm soils explains, therefore, primarily and chiefly, the increasing yields on dry-farm soils that receive proper cultivation. ”

“ They are "strong" and fertile,—and should be able to absorb, and to prepare for the use of plants, the manure which is applied to them, and the fertilizing matters which are brought to them by each storm;—but they cannot properly exercise the functions of fertile soils, for the reason that they are strangled with water, chilled by evaporation, or baked to almost brick-like hardness, during nearly the whole period of the growth and ripening of the crop. ”

“ Another line in which very great improvement is shown is in maintaining the fertility of the soil. The old method was to exhaust the fertility of a field and then clear a new one; and it is doubtful if one farmer in a hundred could have answered the question, “Why does land become sterile after long cultivation?” for they had no conception of what the chemical elements of the soil were which are necessary to its fertility. There are two theories of fertilizing and fertility: one, that the soil is a mine to be worked out, and which will inevitably become unproductive in the process ”

“ Nature stored plant-food in more or less inert form and, as availability has been gained, plants have grown. Our dependence continues.
Plant Constituents.—There are a few technical terms whose use cannot be evaded in the few chapters on the use of lime and fertilizers. A plant will not come to maturity unless it can obtain for its use combinations of ten chemical elements. Agricultural land and the air provide all these elements. If they were in abundance in available forms, there would be no serious soil fertility problem. ”

“ Setting aside the impression gained from the dissimilarity in the so-called corn, potato, wheat, and grass fertilizers on the market, the farmer knows that the soil which is in a good state of fertility is best for any of them, and if the soil is hard-run, it should have its plant-food supply supplemented. The hard-run soil usually is lacking in available supplies of all three plant-food constituents. If a fertilizer containing 3 per cent of nitrogen, 10 per cent of phosphoric acid, and 6 per cent of potash serves the wheat well, it will serve the timothy that starts in the wheat. ”

“ So many consider that all the fertility in a soil is contained in the few top inches of soil, and in a measure this is true—the available fertility is right there—but there is a wealth of unused fertility in the lower strata, but lack of cultivation, lack of moisture and most of all, lack of the humus which makes the soil retentive of moisture, render it unavailable, but if it is broken up and gradually mixed with the humus of the upper soil it becomes available and the soil is increasing in fertility instead of growing thinner and poorer year by year. ”

“ Fertilizers are only part of the problem of soil fertility.
2. In this orchard any treatment that has influenced the trees at all has done so in the following order: first, the cover crops; perhaps several years later, leaf color; shortly after, branch growth and circumference increase; and last of all, yield.
3. The reason for this sequence of results is that the treatments, whether chemical fertilizers, manure, or cover crops, have influenced yields chiefly by changing the organic matter content of the soil ”

“ Investigations have shown that one may go farther and say that one of the most ready means of increasing the crop-producing power of the soil is by adding fertilizers to grass land. The large number of plants per acre enables the plants to utilize the fertilizer to the highest degree, and plowing under the resulting dense sod is one of the most effective methods of enriching the soil. ”

“ Very often a land-owner says, "I have a dozen kinds of soil in every field." This is true in a way, it may be, but if all the field has had the same treatment in the past, the probability is that the fertilizer which is best for one part of the field will be quite good for the other parts. The likeness in characteristics that permits the land to be cropped as one field gives some assurance of likeness in plant-food needs, even where the proportion of clay and sand varies and the color is not the same. ”

“ It is by many considered that irrigation helps to fertilize the soil. The spring and flood water contain great quantities of mud and humus, which when spread over the land will greatly increase its fertility. Even ordinary river water contains salts and other ingredients, which will fertilize the soil to no small degree. Another cause of the increased fertility of subirrigated soils is that the water which constantly evaporates carries with it salts, etc., from the lower strata up towards the surface, and makes them accessible to the roots of the vines. ”

“ If a soil is of such a nature that neither careful, deep plowing at the right time nor constant crust cultivation are sufficient to set free an abundance of plant-food, it may be necessary to apply manures or commercial fertilizers to the soil. While the question of restoring soil fertility has not yet come to be a leading one in dry-farming, yet in view of what has been said in this chapter it is not impossible that the time will come when the farmers must give primary attention to soil fertility in addition to the storing and conservation of soil-moisture. ”

“ It is hoped that the increase in crop yield, resulting from the use of the microbic soil fertilizer, will amount to from 5 per cent, to even 50 per cent., depending primarily upon the condition of the soil. Rich soil naturally requires no fertilizer of any kind. ”

“ The fertilizer acts on the soil, and the soil reacts on the fertilizer; but the point we wish to make prominent is this, that different soils are differently affected by one and the same application, or in other words, a given manure fertilizes a given crop unequally in degree, and unlike in kind, on different soils, by virtue of the different assimilating or fixing power, which the soil exerts upon its ingredients. ”

“ The land that grows heavy clover in a close rotation, or receives all the stable manure, may need neither nitrogen nor potash, while another field, hard-run by timothy and corn, may need a complete fertilizer. When a careful fertilizer test on land of only average productive power has been made, the owner has some definite knowledge of his soil that enables him to give more intelligent treatment to all his fields than was possible before the test had been made. ”