St. Tammany farmer. [volume] (Covington, La.) 1874-current, 1908-01-11
FARMER AND
PLANTER
FALL AND WINTER FLOWING.
The Ground Is in Better Condition
and the Teams Are Stronger.

When crops are all gathered in the
fall and everything is snug for winter,
then is the time, we think, to begin
the work of preparing for the next
years corn crop on heavy clay soils.
I know the point is made by some
that land plowed during the winter
loses much of its fertility before
spring, but in practice we haven't
found this to be the case on our lands.
Anyway, we have found that a sod
broken deeply during the winter will
produce for us better crop of corn
than the same class of land will if
left unbroken until about planting
time.
Then there are so many advantages
of the early breaking over the late
blowing. Time is not such an object,
and we can take our time for the
work, breaking the land deeper and
in narrower burrows; the team is
hard and strong from their years
work; the weather is cool and the
horses are not SO easily injured as
they are in the hot spring days. We
can have time to remove the obstruc-
tons in the fields-rocks, stumps etc.
But the greatest advantage, to our
mind, is that this rough, loose land
will take care of several times the
water during the winter that an I'M
broken soil will, allowing it to pene-
trate the subsoil and be held then for
the use of the coming crop instead
of rushing away to augment the dam
age done by the winter floods over our
section. And SO we start the pillow at
the first opportunity, as soon as the
early winter rains have put the land
in condition so the soil may be broken
deeply with the least expenditure of
horse flesh, and keep right at it eV-
cry day during the winter, when the
soil is not so wet as that the break
ing will cause it to bake.
And we have found, too, that our
land may be worked during the win
ter much better than would be allow
able later in the season. Then if we
have excessive rains during the spring
and the land runs together badly, the
cross-breaking of this early ploWed
land may be done with much less la
Dor than is necessary to freshly break
the same amount Of land. This point
was brought quite forcibly to our no.
tice last spring, when the weather
was very dry here, and land that had
not been broken during the winter
was almost impossible to plow in a
proper manner, while our winter
plowed fields were breaking up mel
low and fine and the teams could walk
right along.
Another advantage of winter plow-
ing is that thousands of destructive
worms and insects are killed by the
freezing of the fresh-plowed land, and
this same freezing tends to break up
the top part of the burrows.
Then in the spring this loose land,
when the cross blowing is done, is
deposited in the bottom of the furrow
and the under side of the slices
brought to the top, where they may
be broken finely by the harrows, so
that when the land is planted the
plant roots will have well-pulverized
soil to feed in to the very bottom of
the furrow. This condition not only
tends to free the plant food in the
soil, but allows for better capillary
work, whereby the sub-soil moisture
is more readily brought to the surface
for use of the plants when drouth
threatens their full development.
This is great advantage we of the
south have in being able to carry on
our work during the entire year in
stead of having it all crowded into
the six or seven months, as it is in
the north and west, and we think our
farmers should realize and act upon
this advantage more than they are
doing. So I hope farmers will keep
this in mind during the coming win
ter and, when they are tempted to put
OA WIN IudL GcLI1 NC
how they were pressed for time the
past spring and how the land was not
prepared as well as it should have
been in a great many instances to in
sure maximum crops because of lack
Of time when the planting season was
at hand.-A. L. French, in Progress
Sive Farmer.