The progressive farmer. [volume] (Winston, N.C.) 1886-1904, 1904-06-28
PLATTER CULTIVATION NEEDED.

For many crops it is quite certain that the
hatter cultivation, instead of the ridge-and-furrow
form SO much used, would better conserve the
moisture and permit the rains to penetrate the
soil more quickly and evenly, with less surface
drainage and correspondingly less waste of soil
fertility. With the distinct ridge-and-furrow
cultivation the bad effects of rainfall are intensi-
fed if it comes at all rapidly, as then it is quite
completely shed into the burrows, where it is
forced to cover less than half of the available area
of the field, and thus becomes equivalent to a
rainfall of more than double the actual amount
in it's tendency to wash and to float away the
organic matter and finer sits, and to dissolve
the water-soluble salts of the soil which have
accumulated over the whole field by evaporation.
The deep, fiat cultivation, with many shallow, mar
row burrows to draw the water, still leaves ridges.
through which, the soil air may escape as the
water enters by percolation from the bottoms of
the burrows, thus facilitating a more rapid per-
collation., which thus holds the water at less depth
in the burrows, forcing it to flow more slowly
and greatly reducing it's carrying power, so that
washing is less marked.
The fiat cultivation ~practiced in 1908 on corn,
potatoes, and cotton worked very satisfactorily,
although the rainfall was heavier than in the pre-
ceding year. It is true, however, that the fields
had been plowed to a depth of five or six inches
with a fourteen-inch pillow, and this undoubtedly
gave the soil a higher receiving capacity for rain.
The effect of this blowing vas to give the entire
surface foot a pore space of more than fifty per
cent, which means that the surface six inches had
a pore space of sixty per cent or more; and this
again means that in the surface six inches alone
there was room to store a rainfall of more than
three inches-a depth of precipitation which does
not often occur within a single day. On a soil
in such condition, with fat cultivation, the salts
which have been drawn to the surface by evapora-
ton drop quickly and evenly back into their
proper place, where they become effective in
plant feeding, being brought again into contact
with the root system, past which they had been
carried by capillarity.
STOCK RAISING IN CONNECTION WITH COTTON
GROWING.
There can be no question but that generally
throughout the cotton belt of the South, where
cotton will continue to be the staple crop, a sys-
tenn of stock raising might be added as an ad-
junct, which, together with a proper rotation of
crops, could be made to yield net returns enough
to more than cover the enormous fertilizer bills
of the South, and in addition thereto to place the
aggregate yield of cotton far above what it now
is. Much, of course, may be done with the use
of commercial fertilizers in conjunction with
green manuring and proper rotations, but this
can not approach in real value, everything con-
sidered, what may be made to follow a rational
introduction of live stock as an adjunct to the
present cultural methods for improving and main
tanning soil fertility.