Montgomery County sentinel. [volume] (Rockville, Md.) 1855-1974, 1899-06-30
agricultural.
Narrowing.

The harrow is one of the tools that
farmers should study with care, in the
light of the ne, DIS of their own soil aud
its condition when plowed, for harrow.
ing is one of the most important opera
tons connected with the preparation of
the soil for crops, and is scarcely less SO
in the case Of such crops as corn, as an
element in the cultivation o. the ground
after the crop is in. Everybody does
not see the question alike, as. indeed,
how should they, since the conditions
of ole farmer differ So much from those
OF another that their several necessities
in regard to it will greatly vary? There
are some soils that are in such a me-
chanical condition, and are plowed in
so timely way with respect to the
moisture that is in them, that they turn
over under the pillow like a bed of ashes
and fall apart with scarcely clod 10
days work. Here narrowing is simply
a question of smoothing the surface,
and tool that will do this answers every
purpose. On other soils the pillow leaves
the ground lumpy and full of holes be-
tween the furrow slices, and narrowing
that merely scratches and levels the
surface does not fill the bill at all. Har-
rowing in such cases must consist in
breaking up the clods and cutting tho
Iurrow slices to a sufficient depth to
settle the soil together and make it a
smooth, compact seed bed through
which the wind will not blow and evap-
crate all the moisture it contains, aud
which will present to the roots finely
comminuted soil from which they may
extract nutriment presented in an avail
able form. Two farmers whose soil rep
resents these two opposite conditions
scarcely understand each other when
they talk about narrowing An imple-
ment that satisfies all the requirements
of the one is of little or no use to the
other, and results that are all that are
necessary in the one case, will in the
other be found worthless.
Outside of blowing matches, where
the best plowmen are on their best be-
havior, there is not great deal of first
rate blowing done on soils that are a
little difficult. We are in the habit of
cultivating acres so large that days
stint is little too big to do the work in
really artistic way, and even the best
plowmen fall into careless habits, and
the result is that most fields are full of
uneven places, cloddy furrow slices,
balks and other imperfections unless
the soil should happen to be of the sort
that pretty much plows itself. The task
of making mellow, well-pulverized
seed bed sufficiently deep to take the
seed at an even depth and give its roots
a chance to spread themselves without
drying out in the open spaces between
clods, is not only a very important one,
but becomes largely question of good
narrowing and plenty of it, with tool
adapted to tn faults to be overcome
The narrowing that is done by way of
cultivation, on the other hand, is quite
another matter. 1t is very necessary,
but it is the surface stirring weed killing,
smoothing, moisture conserving kind of
narrowing that is needed, and with an
entirely different kind of a tool. The
two kinds Of narrowing, in fact, have
scarcely anything in common except the
name.