The Bottineau courant., 1912-09-27
TREATING The SOIL
An important Problem That Faces ihe
Il North Dakota Farmer Today
PECK, OF mIMoT ewes ADVICE

Methods OF Soil Culture That Havs
Been Successful In Ward
County District
lBetter Farming Association Special
Grand Forks, September rs.
No more important problem
faces the North Dakota farmer
than treating the soil in such a
way as to conserve moisture
and furnish a seed bed that,will.
grow paying crop. In, an
article written for the Better
Farming special service bureau
at Grand Forks, w. A. Peck,
the representative of the as.
soeiation in Ward county, calls
attention to the methods Of soil
treatment that have been sue
cessfully used in that section.
A deep compact moist and
mellow seed bed with a loose
granular surface mulch and a
subsoil moist to the depth of
plant root growth" says Mr..
Peck, is the physical condi-
ton of the soil that is the aim
of Better Farming everywhere.
Moisture and not fertility is the
underlying principle of soil
treatment for no matter how
fertile soil may be, unless the
physical condition is such that
these elements are available,
satisfactory crop results cannot
be obtained. Therefore the cne
great problem is moisture in
! its relation to heat and air.
In sections of twenty or more
inches of rainfall, conditions
seems to Justify an annual
cropping of the land under a,
rotation and use~of manures.
In sections Of fifteen to twenty
inches of rainfall, moisture
conditions seem to necessitate
an occasional year of summer
tillage, more often called sum
mer fallow or an inter titled
crop such as corn or potatoes.
In Ward county the normal
rainfall averages fifteen to
twenty inches annually. Mr..
Peck writes that on some thir-
ty farms rotations have been
established in which one third
of the area is summer titled,
part of which may be corn or
potatoes and two-thirds of the
area is devoted to grain. In
these rotations the aim is to
secure an ideal soil condition.
It was not expected, starting
work last spring that the soil
condition could be secured for
grain crops this year, but as
far as possible good farming
has been done.
Fields which were to be sum-
mer titled offered the first op-
portunity to secure the ideal
soil condition. In the spring,
the fields intended for crops
were double disced and fields
intended for summer tillage re-
ceived h e same treatment
later. This operation stopped
levaDOration. warmed and
mreated the soil. In the case
of summer tillage besides stop
ping evaporation, it started
weed growth and the mellow
ing of the subsoil.
About four weeks after the
first discing in the spring the
summer tillage fields were
again disced. This time single
discing was employed unless
1.-THE weeds had made such
growth as to make double disc
ingnecessary. On a few farms
the fields were narrowed about
1.-TWO weeks after first discing
land single disced two or three
weeks before blowing.
The fields were plowed June
10 to July 15, from seven to
mime inches deep. The plow
E7xas followed the same day by
Ia packer. either the Campbell
Isub-surface packer or q disc set
lstraight and weig ghted and a
Harrow. In every case the
fields plowed easily and turned
lover moist and mel low. Where
las portions Of fields where no
work had been done and weeds
allowed to grow, the ground
Twas dry and could not BE plow-,
i I'd more than the usual depth
Il 1f ff,l1 sf,r- ~ ivfs ir1c cf1na n nfuuifl1