The herald and news. [volume] (Newberry S.C.) 1903-1937, 1910-09-30
FLOWING WITH DYNAMITE.
By c. B. Edwards, in Technical
World Magazine.

= q r X X X <
j.. Henry Caldwell, of Spartanburg,
n. c., is the first man to utilize COM
mercial dynamite in plowing land.
Up to the present time the soil has
been stirred or Ebroken" by means
of a turn plow. This common i'm
plement, drawn by one or two horses.
breaks the land only to depth Of
four or FIVE inches, and this is in
sufficient for the clay soil of the COM
pact sticky character which exists OH
the large farm of Mr.. Caldwell. The
toe of the plow moreover acts upon
the substrata of clay just as a plane
does on a plank. 1t smoothes or
dresses the clay and packs it so thot
it will hold water When seasons CT
heavy or excessive rai,. are encoun-
tered the plowed top soil floats off
and leaves the land devoid of the nec-
essary plant food which the crop to
that more money must be spent in fer
tilizing the field, else by a plentiful
use of manure the land must in some
way be brought back to it's former
condition Of fertility. It has been
demonstrated that farm such as Mr..
Caldwell's, which is located largely
over hard pan, can not be fertilized
to the extent that it should be. At
every unusual fall of moisture the
costly fertilizer will be washed off the
land on to that of lucky neighbor.
In any event the fertilizer on such
land will only penetrate to depth OF
four Or five inches, the hard pan ef-
fectually preventing the further in
gress of fertilizer and making the
plant food available only to the sur
face roots of the crop grown. In or
der to overcome this difficulty and
allow the fertilizer to sink far in and
become a permanent reserve of plant
food in the soil, it is at once apparent
that the land must be broken to much
greater depths than is possible with
the ordinary plow. This is nothing
new, it is true, for the subsoil plow
has been used for many years back
and is a direct result Of reasoning
along these lines.
But Mr. Caldwell has used sub
soil plow on his land and declares
it totally unfit for use on clay or hard
pan land. The subsoil plow is a heavy
T-shaped steel implement. In use,
the top part of the T goes along at
the intersection of the surface soil
with the subsoil and cuts the soil
at distance of about foot from the
surface. The subsoil plow gives no
mixing movement to the under strata,
nor does it do more than simply give
the soil slight ventilation. The sub
soil plow, on account of the depth at
which it works, is also very hard on
men and horses and it is impossible
to plow over two acres a day in the
clay land on Mr.; Caldwell's farm
While the effects of subsoil plowing
we're beneficial in a way and showed
results in a slight increase in crop
production, the result as a whole was
not satisfactory. When the subsoil-
ing was done on clay land, Mr.. Cald-
we'll found that the subsoil plow
broke up the capillary attraction that
allowed plants to draw on the subsoil
in times of drouth, and in times Of
rain the rain water would not pene-
trate the clay land beyond the depth
of the subsoil plowing.
In view of these facts, Mr. Caldwell
drew the conclusion that the land
must be broken to depth Of four or
five feet to permit of the doing away
with terraces to prevent the wash
ing Of the surface soil. He had OBJ
served that where stumps are pulled
or any deep excavation made and fill
ed, the land where such excavation
has been made grow much better
crops than the surrounding soil The
crops over such spots did not wither
with drouth and in time of rain the
surface soil with it's valuable plant
food was not washed about. The ex-
perimenter says:
'I have had occasion to open graves
that have been dug for so years and
the earth is soft and permeable to the
bottom. I have opened old wells that
have been filed and could follow the
sides all the way down by the diff
ference in the. density of the soil. My
conclusions from these observations
was that clay once disturbed to a
depth of four feet will never pack to
fo,. hot