Omaha daily bee., 1890-06-23
OF INTEREST TO The FARMER.
An Eastern Writer Discusses the True Phil
osophy of Flowing.
SOIL STIRRING IS NOT ESSENTIAL,
High Market Value of Fresh Eggs.
How Young Pigs Should BE Fed
---Moving Bees---City Men
AS Farmers.

A common opinion is that we plow the
ground in order to make bed OF loose
mold in which the roots can spread and
feed with ease, thus promoting growth;
while at the same time destroying other
competitive growth, or making it easier
TO destroy IL. The last Of these reasons
should be put first, for it is, by all odds,
the main reason for using IL plow, says
writer in the New York Tribune. 1t is
common to find plants and trees and even
vines of all sorts growing with the finest
health and vigor ON soil never stirred at
all, If there is fertility slough; and If, by
mulch or other MEANS the plant is pro-
tected from competition by other plants,
and has room enough all to itself for its
full development. Cattle are apt to de-
stroy such specimens in the fields, but in
the garden we find hardy flowers that
have seeded themselves in the fall on the
hard ground, if left alone make better
and stronger plants than any we get by
sowing on worked ground in the spring
/ have repeatedly, on receiving two or
three plants of some new strawberry,
early in the spring, put the roots into
hollow in some fall-worked bed, too wet
to work at the time, and covered each
with a fire-shovelful of dry mold or
sand, and these have always ex-
Ncelled those planted later on mel
lowed soil. A large strawberry
grower in the west--I think Mr. Smith
lately stated similar experience on n
large scale. have planted onions aud
lettuce seed similarly on fall-prepared
ground with excellent results. The
Tribune not long since contained an ac-
count of an enormous melon growth by
the first professor of botany at the Penn
sylvania agricultural college, on piece
of sod which was never stirred, nor hoed
the only culture being given with
shovel used only to scatter around the
hill thick, wide mulch of chip mold.
And another case of corn being brought
into the garden by the Johnstown flood,
terminating in the inch of mud left on
the old strawberry bed, and being
thinned and protected from weeds, etc,
made perfect and unusually productive
in growth. This is, on small scale, an
example of the mode of culture common
on the Nile, and indeed in most parts of
Africa and ASIA where simply scratch
ing the soil with pointed block of wood
often produces better yield with less
manuring than we get by our assiduous
and often overdone employment of the
plows we take such pride in, but which
are undoubtedly means of greatly
Fastening the ruin of the soil and of the
farmer, when used injudiciously, espe-
cially when the operation buries the rich
s0 face deep under n mass of raw subsoil:
O. who n the stirred soil is not sufficiently
reconsolidated by rolling or dragging to
make it safe bed for the tender roots
OF newly germinated plants, while the
surface left on or near the surface, re-
majns free and open because it is chiefly
/humus, which does not consolidate or
compact like the lOam or clay beneath
it. We want the pillow, then, not so
much to make an open bed for the roots
OF plants, as to sweep out of their way
in the SIeediest and completest way,
the .P Occupants of the soil, which
being itablished there would leave no
room or chance for our crop, and must,
Experience has taught the emigrants
to the west, who have been obliged to
search out the surest and cheapest way
of annihilating the prairie sod and grow
ing corn at once in its place, that very
shallow pairing off and reversal of the
entire surface, which then remains on
the surface, is the way to succeed in
both aims. And the same principle APP
plies in preparing sod ground anywhere
for corn or wheat. AS means of re-
tanning the Indispensable water longer,
the soil should be we'll loosened UP under
the surface, and the ideal plow for such
>tield is one that will both pare and re-
verso carbonaceous surface soil, and
scarify the soil below ut one operation
II roller following.