The progressive farmer and southern farm gazette. (Starkville, Miss.) 1910-1920, 1910-03-19
Professor Massey's
Editorial Page.
Subsoiling and Terraces.

MOI readers that / have advocated deep SUBJ
AA4 soiling under all conditions of soils, while
l have uniformly tried to show that in my own ex-
perience, and that of others 1 have had oppor-
tunity to observe, there is seldom any advantage
in subsoiling on level lands that need drainage
more than anything else. and that on light sandy
soils 1t may be positive disadvantage.
Where lands are light and sandy it is generally
an advantage to get something of firmer nature,
a sort of hard-pan, below reasonably deep plow-
ing, to check the tendency of such soils to be
leachy; and on lands where the sandy soil is too
deep for the ordinary pillow to touch clay very
deep blowing may be disadvantage. In the level
clay soils, subsoiling will do little good, for the
loosened subsoil will at once settle back as firm
as ever. and the benefit that might at times show
will hardly pay for the extra expense
But there lands all over the South where
deep subsoling will be of immense benefit. These
arc the billy lands of the Piedmont section On
these lands know, from practical work on them,
that deep subsoiling is one of the very best
means for checking the washing and Outlying of
the soil I know, from having worked as steep
red hills as are in cultivation anywhere that If
the land is plowed eight inches regularly and SUBJ
soiled six to eight inches deeper, and sod is al
ways turned when the land is broken for a hoed
crop, there will be need for terracing, if the
crop is cultivated level and shallow and no fur
rows made around the hills to catch head OF
water. 1t is the shallow breaking and the lack
OF vegetable nber to hold the soil together that
have made the gulles In the red hills of the South
/ know that the sod and the deep blowing and
subsoiling will check washing better than all the
terraces ever made. for l have practiced 1t with
success.
On hills that have for generations been scratch
ed over and the humus completely worn out it
will not do to abandon the terraces all at once
We must restore the humus by adding vegetable
matter to the soil. and get a sod to turn when
ever the hills are broken, and then keep them but
a season in clean culture and back to the condi-
tons that will make more vegetable matter before
another clean hoed crop is planted. But given
the soil conditions that will resist washing and
then add the deep breaking and subsoilng and
you will need no terracing whatever. Farmers in
the hills of Georgia who have taken my advice
In this matter have found that right.
Another great advantage in deep subsoiling Of
the red hills is the retention of the water in the
land and the prevention Of damage from drouth
Northern man writing recently in reply to
Southern hill farmer the red clay told him
that probably the land needs drainage for they
found that on upland clay in the North under
drains are important. But the compact glacier
ground clay OF the North is very different thing
from the coarser texture of the red lands of the
South that have never been ground by glaciers
and the retention of the water is of far more i'm