Washington State journal and Adams County news. [volume] (Ritzville, Wash.) 1906-1907, 1907-02-20
WINTER WEATHER
PLEASES FARMERS.
Few Winters in Years Have Shown
Such q Combination of Favor
able Conditions.

mo WlNCer III recent years mas DeeH
SO favorable for farmers of the Inland
Empire as the present one thus far.
While there has been unusual and pro.
longed cold it has been attended by
conditions that have made it possible
for the land to receive all the benefits
of cold weather and none of the dis
astrous effects.
Nothing is desired more by farmers
than deep freezing of the ground,
provided the freeze does no damage.
A freeze mellows the ground, kills the
seeds of many plants. and more espe-
cially destroys the eggs Of thousands
of harmful insects. The deeper the
freeze the more beneficial it is, and
nothing pleases farmers better than to
have their land to be plowed in the
spring frozen to the depth of or 10
inches.
The fortunate circumstance in con-
nection with the cold this winter is
the abundance of snow, which has
formed complete protection for the
wheat. Had the wheat fields been bare
during the hard freezes of the past few
days thousands of acres would have
been greatly damaged or completely
ruined by the tender plants freezing
out of the ground. But with cover
ing of five or six inches of snow the
growth is protected, and when the sun
and chinook winds finally hold sway
over the cold and the snow slowly melts
and saturates the ground with moist
ure it will disclose a green growth
that has fourished beneath the pro-
tecting coverlet, and which will appear
as rank and unframed as if it had
been nurtured by an April sun.
Where the ground is thinly covered
with snow this season it has frozen to
a depth of five or six inches, which will
put 1t in fine shape for blowing next
spring. The percentage of fall wheat
in the northwest is not as great as in
the middle west, where no spring
wheat at all is sown, but there has
been tendency in recent years to SOW
in the fall in preference to the spring
and those who have adopted the fall
sowing are jubilant over the present
prospects. There was an abundance of
fall rains, which helped the wheat,
and before there was any severe freez-
ing from five to seven inches of snow
covered the level fields. Farmers are
now hoping that the snow on the
ground at present will not melt for a
month or six weeks, when danger of
hard freeze will be past.
Outside of peaches, fruit is not dam
aged to any extent by mid-winter
freezes, and for this reason fruitgrow-
ers are not alarmed at the recent cold
spell. In fact, apple growers are
pleased with it, as the eggs of many
pests will be destroyed, and the apple
tree is hardy plant and practically
immune from injury by midwinter cold.
Cherries are sometimes harmed by too
severe freezes, but only when the ther-
mometer goes many degrees lower than
it has this year, or when the freeze is
preceded by abnormally warm weather.
causing the sap to begin to rise.
A farmer commenting on the present
year said last week that if the recent
snow lies on the ground for a few
weeks more there will be better chances
for wheat crop than for years, and
the result will probably be a much
larger area of fall wheat next year.
Wheat which has the advantage of
snow during the winter comes through
with practically start of a month over
that which is sowed in the spring, and
consequently it natures much earlier,
greatly lessoning the chances which
late wheat must take with drouth and
hot winds.
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