The Forest Republican. [volume] (Tionesta, Pa.) 1869-1952, 1890-01-15
CROPS WITHOUT WATER,
RESULT OF EXPERIMENTS IN THE
AMERICAN DESERT.
All That Was Done Was TO Hold the
Ground Down with Matted Straw
and TO Plow Deep.

To make barren waste produce food
plants proftably without supplying waters
such was the problem with which the
botanical division of the Agricultural
Department found itself, while ago,
confronted.
Accordingly an experiment station was
started by the division last autumn in
southwest Kansas, not far from Garden
City. This particular location was chosen
because its conditions were typical of the
arid region generally. Two hundred and
forty acres were bought-eighty acres in
one spot and 100 in another. The land
was mostly open prairie, the surface
stiff clay loan, the top of which was
baked by the sun into firm crust almost
as impervious to rain as so much slate.
About twenty inches of rain fell, it was
learned, in twelvemonth-pretty nearly
the average throughout the desert belt,
and, of course, it ran off without enter
| ing the soil. The superintendent Of the
station and his men set to work to see
what could be done with the eighty-acre
patch. To eight acres Of the space, how
ever, they mainly confined their prelimi-
nary experiments; the rest, for the most
part, they planted with forage for the
mules and cattle, employing irrigation to
help things along; but the eight acres
were not irrigated moi supplied with
water in any manner artificially. The
eight acres, as originally found, were
covered with burr grass and prickly
| perennial weed with long botanical
name that is regarded out West as
worst curse than the Canada thistle
! being even more difficult to eradicate.
| All this was cleared off in the early part
of last fall, the soil was plowed and har
rowed until thoroughly pulverized "A foot
deep, and last spring it was planted with
! grasses and forage plants. 1t was found
that the winters frosts tended to dlsinte-
| CRATE the baked surface crust and render
it readily arabic. Only eight acres were
treated in this way, because there were
only seeds enough of the sorts desired to
| plant that amount of space.
/ The notion of the Agricultural Depart
ment has been that the food plants best
adapted for agricultural use in the dry
belt had been already placed there by all
wise nature, and so, inasmuch as no seeds
of such plants were purchasable, men
were sent over the prairies of western
Kansas and Colorado in September and
October of last year, with sacks over their
shoulders and sheep shears in their hands,
to cut off the tops of the ripened grasses
and things, for it was desired to plant
these germs and find out what they would
do with cultivation. As forty kinds of
grass and forage plant seeds were i'm
ported from abroad, including eighteen
or twenty varieties from India. These
were all planted last spring on the eight
acres in the dry pulverized soil, together
with about a dozen species collected by
the grass gatherers from the prairies. The
! latter species were nearly all represented
likewise by eleven varieties of grass
planted in the shape of sods, from one to
! five square rods of each, got within the
neighborhood of the station. Such was
the work of the spring last year. The
prickly weed persisted in reappearing and
! gave an immense deal of trouble. Men
/ had to go over the land constantly with
! gloves and pick it out by hand. No
water was contributed artificially to the
ordinarily parched land and the expert
mental party devoted its attention to put
ting up buildings for lodging the party
and for storing seed while it waited to
lind out what would come up without
water from soil that for lack of water had
never produced anything before.
Part of the eight acres was covered
with matted straw, after the planting, and
part was not. The part left uncovered
produced very little, for--as is usual in
that region of wild-swept plains-thc
| powdered surface soil, with the seeds put
in it, was blown away. But the part COW
cred with the straw produced, without
a drop of water supplied save the scanty
rains, far more abundant crop than was
raised, with tirst-rate irrigation to help, on
the rest of the eighty acres which had
been sown to feed the mules and cattle of
the expedition.
! In a word it has been discovered that
the average soil of the great American
desert can be made to produce plentiful
harvests of grasses, forage plants, and,
| II those, then also meat, corn and pota'
toes, without any more water than is sup
! piled at present To accomplish the re-
suit two things are needed-the ground
must be pulverized deeply, to make Il
bed for holding the water that falls in
rain, and the planted surface must be
covered after the sowing of the first crop
with matted straw. Subsequent crops
will require no straw, for the reason that
the matted roots will keep the dry earth
from being blown away.
This is an addition to human knowl
edge which in the opinion of the Agri-
| cultural Department official who talked
to Washington star reporter should
throw open to agriculture hundreds OF
thousands of acres hitherto deemed
worthless and add hundreds of million,
of dollars to the taxable valuation of the
country.
Next spring the entire 24O acres Of the
Kansas station will be planted with eX.
| perlmental crops in grasses and forage,
without a particle Of irrigation; therc
will be plenty Of seed then on hand for
| planting the whole tract. The chiel
trials plants in that region have to bear
are the cold winds of March and April.
which sweep away with hurricane force
the plowed soil, and the hot winds, like
the sirrOccO of the Sahara. which mss