AGRICULTURE.

Lyttelton Times, Volume LXX, Issue 8557, 10 August 1888, Page 6

AGRICULTURE.

An American writer on agricultural matters says :—We cultivate the soil often in great ignorance of the reason, and being ignorant of the reason, we do not cultivate properly. I once ceased cultivating my vineyard at a critical time upon the advice of an ignorant gardener, who told me the weather was too hot, and that the more I exposed the earth the more the sun would evaporate the moisture, and I would in a short time blow all the moisture out. A slight crust had formed on the top. “There,” he said, “leave it now, and depend upon it the moisture will not come out.” My vines soon began to beg for drink. It was plain that something waa wrong. My gardener said we had better haul water to them, and Irigged aportable tank and hauled water a mile. I was not satisfied and wrote to Professor Hilgard. He made the whole matter plain. He said if I would put a dry brick on a wet sponge the brick would soon absorb all the water, but if I would put a dry sponge on a wet brick the sponge would not absorb the water. My crust on the top of my ground was the dry brick on the wet sponge, and was rapidly taking up the moisture and giving it off in evaporation. Keep the tilth of your ground good, he said, and you will have no trouble. I did not know in those days exactly what he meant by “ tilth,” but I went to Webster and found that it meant the condition of the cultivated soil. I began to ask myself why the uncultivated ground outside grew dry for several feet deep, why summerfallowed land dried out too, and lost ita moisture, andwhy well-cultivated patches of garden and vines, and many vegetables, got along with watermelons raised on a similar land without irrigation, while I was in the act of wetting my vines, whose roots were two feet down under ground. I felt humiliated at my ignorance, discharged my gardener, pub my hoes and cultivators to work, and managed to arrest the evaporation in time to save my vines. Now, then, let us see how this great mystery is to be explained. If you break up your land in large lumps and leave it, you know it dries out rapidly. First the clods will grow hard and lose. their moisture; then the general surface bakes and begins the fatal work of sapping the ground below. In proportion as you pulverise the lumps you reduce the .evaporating surface, aud if you reduce these lumps to fine powder this evaporating surface is all gone except the fine particles forming the surface. Now, by keeping any crust from forming among these particles or beneath them for a few inches, you break and destroy the 10,000 capillaries that suck up and pass off the moisture. The finer the grain of soil the better it retains the moisture, and the more nearly you can reduce your soil to dust or powder, the better it will retain moisture. If it were possible to' give our orchards the treatment we do our gardens, we would be amazed at the tree growth. If your soil is coarse, it needs all the more working. ______________