Dodgeville chronicle. [volume] (Dodgeville, Wis.) 1862-current, 1874-06-05
Deep or Shallow Culture.

DISCUSSIONS continually go on in agri-
cultural quarters as to whether soil should
be deeply stirred or plowed up shallow.
The contestants on each side bring facts
and figures to sustain them. What are
we to say of these apparent contradic-
lions? If one man says that he had land
shallow-plowed which yielded but ten
bushels of wheat per acre, and after turn
ing it up deeply it brought twenty, are
we to say this is all nonsense-he did not
get the twenty? Or if man tells us that
he does not pillow at all, but stirs up the
ground with ag-harrow, and that still
he gets as good crops as he ever had by
the deepest soil stirring, are we to tell the
man we do not believe him? Yet this is
practically the condition of things to-
day. The advocates Of each practice en-
trench themselves on their separate facts
and experiences, and the observations of
others on the other side have no weight
with them at all.
For our part we take pleasure always
in listening to the experience of those
who talk to us in opposition to our own
views. We learn more in this way than
in any other whatever. We often find
not that our own experience goes for
nothing-but that we have overlooked
some agent in success which ought
to have been taken into account.
In fact, it is just here that so
much error comes in and leads to inter-
minable discussion, when really people
occupy the same ground. For the effects
we see produced In our own everyday
operations are never the result of one
cause, but of several acting in harmony
together. For instance, seed will not grow
without there be some moisture in the
soil; but it would be absurd to argue the
merit OF different systems of seed-sowing
from the moisture point alone. We must
consider light, and heat and air, and nu-
triton, and several other things alto
gether. Thus it is with this question Of
deep blowing. One thing is certain, that
if we have soil which dries out very
soon, and becomes hard on the surface,
plants growing here will fail very soon in
a dry season. The deeply-loosened soil,
under these circumstances, permits of
moisture coming up from below, and thus
the plant is enabled to keep on, in even the
worst seasons growing to maturity But
if the situation be low, or the season wet,
when water is an injury instead of ben.
eft, then the deeper the soil the worse for
the crop; because in such soil and stu
alton the water is encouraged to remain
there instead of passing away over the
surface to the nearest ditch. The ques-
ton, then, is removed from one of deep
soil to an overplus of water and we mis-
take the whole point when we think that
deep culture is alone involved.
We have seen illustrations of this over
and over again. We knew friend, some
years ago, who had small piece of gar
den ground, wherein he grew fruits and
vegetables for his family in his spare
time, and sold what he did not need to
provision stores close by. One season he
trenched, as it is called, a piece of
ground-that is, he loosened it up two
feet deep, and about the end of Jul y he
planted bush beans thereon. The
whole of the season that followed was ex-
cessively dry, but his beans grew, as he
said, like wildfre, and the quantity of
soft, brittle snapshots" that he OBJ
tanned from comparatively short piece
of ground was prodigious, and the profits
no less wonderful. He thought he had
found the secret of growing beans. He
had that year an abundance,
and of very superior quality, when
his neighbOrs had none; and why could
he not always do the same? He ex-
tended the area of his trenched bean
ground the next season; but that season
proved a wet one, and ON that same
ground his beans did not do at all. The
soil was brick earth at the depth of foot
or so, and the water of course came from
the surrounding hard earth to the looser
subsoiled portion, till it was a little sea
of water, in which roots of course could
not thrive
We may learn from this that there is
nothing in either deep or shallow plow-
ing in itself. 1t is only as other ques-
tions are involved with it that any prac.
teal argument can be turned out of it. 1t
is one of those questions in which CON-
mon sense must play a conspicuous part
-Forney's Weekly Press.