The Cecil Whig. [volume] (Elkton, Md.) 1841-current, 1889-07-06
CALIFORNIA WHEAT FARMING,

English farm journals have lately been
strongly crlticising the methods of raising
| wheat on the great farms of California
and Dakota. They insist that growing
wheat on the same soil year alter year,
| or even on alternate years, without ierti-
lizers, is wonderful, and that the natural
| tendency OF such practices is to exhaust
the constituents upon which the plant
| leeds, and without which the soil would
| sooner Or later prove unproductive. Mr..
Berry, one OF the large farmers in Cali
| fornia, lakes issue with the English
critics. To question put by a cores
pondent, who asked how long it would be
before land worked as he works 1t would
need tertilizing, he replied that ''in the
way we farm here | doubt if it will eve,
need it. l know land that has been farm
| ed for thirty years, and there is no
thought OF it's needing fertllizing yet. We
usually let our land rest. Alternately
we pillow it one year, and the next year
we SOW it and raise a crop" This is
what the old farmers used to call giving
the land a summer tallow. The object of
| it is to destroy weeds aud insects and
allow time for the land to recuperate
But it cannot give back to the soil the
constituents that the crop has taken from
it. The English and the best American
| farmers for this purpose resort to the
three or four shift system, never growing
the same crop second time on the same
| soil during the course, but alternating it
with other crops and with a green crop
| turned under, such as clover, or at the
| South pea vines, adding to these all the
manure made on the farm or commercial
! fertilizers. 1t is only in this way, &C
| cording to their experience, that the soil
can be maintained in a high state of fer
| tility. 1t is true that many of the West
ern soils are very rich, and the farmers
may go on cropping them year after year
without resorting to the barnyards or
turning under green crops, aud that dur
| lug many years they may not perceive
any material difference i'll the Yield. But
all the time they are simply drawing on
their reserve of the constituents in the
soil. There is no means OF adding to this
reserve except by manurcs OF green crops,
and consequently year by year it is III
process OF exhaustion. An alternate sum-
mer iallow may restore through the at
mosphere part of the nitrogen the pre-
vious crop has taken from it, but it cannot
supply potash and the phosphates, and
these are the most important of all, AS
the yield in grain depends upon them. 1t
is a mistaken notion, therefore, that the
constituents of even the richest soils are
Inexhaustible. Ii they were we should
not have seen tue wheat belt moving
steadily westward during the past CEN
fury, until the heaviest yield of that GER
cal, which was once the boast of the
Genessee valley, is now to be found re-
corded i'll the new lauds of Dakota, and
the alluvials of California. Even in the
older Western States the product has
been steadily declining from twenty three
bushels to the acre to an average of thir.
teen, as reported by the last census. 1t
is, therefore, time to call the Western
system 'an exhaustive and slovenly
SYSTEM" a criticism that Mr.. Berry
laughs at and resents while declaring his
confidence in the perpetuity of the fertil-
ity of the soil he tills. We know better.
In common with other farmers of the old
thirteen States, we in Maryland have
seen much of our lands become Exhausted
by constant cropping, and can point sor-
rowfully to old fields grown up to sedge
grass and scored with gullies as an evil
dence of the improvideuce of our fore.
fathers. We are trying, not unsuccess-
fully, to amend this state of things. The
process OF renovation is slow, but we
have learned the lesson that if we are to
have good crops we must give to the soil
the constituents on which those crops
eed.-Baltim0re Sun.