Yorkville enquirer. [volume] (Yorkville, S.C.) 1855-2006, 1869-05-20
AaritnItnral department.
DEEP AND SHALLOW FLOWING.

Horace Greeley in paper read at recent
meeting of the American Institute Farmers
Club, is entitled to vastly more considera-
ton than most of what he says on political
subjects:
Many controversies result from imper-
feet definitions. The same words, the same
phrases convey different ideas to the rival
disputants. Let me begin then, by making
myself clearly understood. TO save time,
l will define by negation or excluslon-as
follows:
AU soils do not require plowimg to the
same depth because
I. A large portion of the earth's surface
should never be plowed st all. No wet
lands should be ploWed until thoroughly,
permanently drained; plowing them while
still wet, or certain to become so after rains,
is throwing labor away. A very large
area, consisting of swsmps, marshes, bogs,
fens, sea, lake, river, and brook margins or
intervsles frequently submerged, or sodden,
should never be plowed until drained or
embarked.
II. Then great portion of the rocky
hillsides or crests, which consist mainly
of rocks thinly covered by, and often pro-
truding through the soil, should never be
plowed, but should be kept always in for
est, from which timber is taken from time
to time, but never to such an extent as to
reveal its ruggedness. Westchester county
alone, has thousands of acres, now denuded
and devoted to grazing, which should never
have been cleared. Cut off the timber, if
you are not content with cutting out, but
keep such sough land always in wood. Its
cultivation can never pay; it's grass is burnt
up by a sultry week while stripping it Of
timber tends to render our springs and
streams scanty and caprieious.
III. There are, moreover, lands too
sterile to be cultivated with profit, at least,
while SO much good land lies idle and use
less. These lands are often level enough,
and not too stony but it will cost more to
bring them to proper state Of fertility
than they will then be worth. Some of
these might be, and probably, ought forth
with to be, sowed with nuts and tree seeds
and so covered with timber.
w. Then there are lands which have q
good, though shallow surface-soil, but COW
ering poisonous subsoil, which must not
be disturbed. Professor Mapes found such q
tract in West Jersey, where stratum of
sulphate of iron (copperas) lay but eight
inches below the surface. To plow into
this, and mix it with the surface-soil, arres-
ted vegetation altogether.
V. And again; There are soils, mainly
alluvial, at once so mellow and 80 fertile
that the roots of the cereals, and of most
plants, will permeate and draw sustenance
from them though they are never disturbed
by the plow. There are portions of the
intervale of the Illinois where the muck is
sixteen feet deep, very loose and rich. l
was told in California, that the grape,
though it had to be watered sparingly du-
ring the first two summers, needed no irri-
CATION thereafter in the valleys of that
State, though they are dried up in summer
to depth Of several feet. The roots strike
down through the rich loan below, till they
can find moisture that they can appropri-
ate and thrive upon. judge that the
valley of the Sacramento, and its main trib-
utaries, is often parched to depth of four
or FIVE feet.
have thus fully conceded that deep
plowing is not everywhere requisite. Now,
let me show where and Dhy 1t is needed:
I. 1t has been abundantly demonstra-
ted here, that the roots of plants are often
found at distance of several feet from the
stem. Any of us may have seen that this
is as true of Indian corn as of Canada this
ties; with a microscope and due patience
the roots of wheat may be traced from four
to six feet. Of course, these roots seek
nourishment and find it. Nature, in the
broad view, makes no abortive, at least, no
wanton effort. Roots wander in search of
food not otherwise to be found.
II. Our sub-soils are generally compact
and repellent. Wherever ditcher would
naturally use pick, there few roots can
make their way, except very slowly and by
wasting effort. Few or no cereals or edi-
BILE roots can feed and flourish on the pene-
tration of such subsoils. And, while our
sands and looser gravels are more easily
traversed, they seldom contain the plant
food whereof the roots are in search. They
either remain unpenetrated, or the effort is
unrewarded by any gain of nutrition to the
plant.
III. Our summers and autumns are Of
ten persistently hot and dry. The con-
tinuously torrid suns which this year des-
troyed half the later crops of Europe, are
here encountered as often as every third
year. Drouth is one of the foremost caus-
es of the failure of our crops. Our ances-
tors mainly emigrated hither from the
British isles, from Holland, and the coasts
of Northern and Western Europe, where
humidity is the rule, protracted drouth the
exception. Sixteen inches of soil in our
climate is hardly equal, as an antidote to
drouth, to six inches in Ireland or Holland.
And yet, the best farmers of those coun-
tries agree in commencing deeper plowing.
". What we advocate is not the bury
ing of the vegetable or natural surface.soil
under several inches of cold, lifeless clay,
sand or gravel. If the subsoil is not to be
enriched, it may better remain the sub-soil !;
but that does not prove that it ought mott be
lifted, stirred, aerated, pulverized. The
right thing to do is to enrich as well as
mellow and arate the entire soil to depth