The advocate., 1897-09-29
SubsOiling,

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Editor Advocate Decidedly good
thing is to subsoil the ground twenty
tive inches deep, If you take sufficient
time to do 1t In. There are serious OBJ
jectlons to going very deep at one time,
but il you desire to make q grand sue
cess and a continued and lasting one,
subsoil every year until you get it down
twenty-five inches deep. That depth
can be reached the third year. There
is once in a while man that has tried
1t one year under the most unfavorable
conditions and at the wrong time of
year. He usually puts on all the horses
he has got and breaks up the subsOil
deep all at one time and generally
breaks everything else that can be broke
before he has done very much subsoil-
ing and pulls the life out of his horses
and gets discouraged and says subsOil-
Ing is fake. This man does the work
late in the spring; the subsOil being very
hard, breaks up in Jumps, leaving alto
gether too much air space. A large
amount Of water is required to dissolve
the Jumps so the soil can settle together
again, and he Is liable not to get it in
the spring, and so he says subsoillng did
him no good and was very hard work
besides Now If he had run the sub
soil ploW only five or six inches below
the soil that had once been plowed,
which he could do with two horses with
cut breaking anything except the sub
soil, he would have made a success of it.
Fall, however, is the best time to do
the work, for there is hardly doubt in
regard to the water supply for that depth
of plOwed ground, which is about eleven
inches deep from the surface, at least
twice as deep as it ever had been plowed
before. The soil below that isalways more
porous, for the reason the fine sediment
that is washed down from the loose top
soil was checked in its course by the dry
top subsoil being so much harder, solid
and non-porous than 1t is further down.
The sediment has sealed up all the pores
in it and being near the surface has
been dried out by evaporation, besides
1t has been packed by the weight of the
plow and tramping Of the horses in the
furrOw year after year until it finally
becomes so hard and solid that it offers
an effectual barrier to water. The
bottom of the twenty-five inches would
in time become in like condition, pro-
Vided the moisture could be dried out as
thoroughly as the top subsoil, then
by the horses feet and ironed
and polished by the bottom of the plow.
But such could not be the case with it,
for, If the top soil is stirred so that
water can go down into the broken sub
soil every year or once in two or three
years, the subsoil will never get dry and
hard No matter if fine sediment does
go down to the bottom Of the subsOiled
ground it remains moist, and moist
soil though ever so fine is a conductor
For water. 1t does not act as a cement
unless it becomes dry and packed. So
Il the top soil is cultivated every year
It surely will remain moist. But in case
It was seeded down to meadow or used
for pasture for a long term of years, it |
might be necessary to use the subsOil |
Dlow again. But it would be compara-
lively light work compared with what |
/ was at first, for it would require ages
10 become as hard and solid as before
being stirred. Surely 1t is decidedly |
good to subsoil deep. H.