The Story of the Soil Part 31

The phosphorus content of our surface soil is greater than that of the subsurface, but below the subsurface the phosphorus again increases. This is probably due to the fact that the prairie gra.s.ses that grew here for centuries extracted some phosphorus from the subsurface in which their roots fed to some extent, and left it in the organic residues which acc.u.mulated in the surface soil.

Aside from the difference in organic matter, the physical character of our soil is distinctly inferior to the loam soils about Blairville and Leonardtown. We have a very satisfactory silt loam surface, but the structure of our subsoil is quite objectionable. It is a tight clay through which water pa.s.ses very slowly, so slowly that the practicability of using tile-drainage is still questioned by the State University, although the experiments which the University soil investigators have already started in several counties here in "Egypt" will ultimately furnish us positive knowledge along this line.

As for me, I purpose making no experiments, whatever. I do not see how I or any other farmer can afford to put our limited funds into experiments, especially when we often lack the facilities for taking the exact and complete data that are needed. It takes time and labor and some equipment to make accurate measurements, to weigh every pound of fertilizer applied and every crop carefully harvested from measured and carefully seeded areas, especially selected because of their uniform and representative character. I think this is public business and it is best done by the State for the benefit of all.

I have heard narrow politicians call it cla.s.s legislation to appropriate funds for such agricultural investigations, but the fact is that to investigate the soil and to insure an abundant use of limestone, phosphate, or other necessary materials required for the improvement and permanent maintenance of the fertility of the soil is legislation for all the people, both now and hereafter. Would that our Statesmen would think as much of maintaining this most important national resource, as they do of maintaining our national honor by means of battles.h.i.+ps and an army and navy supported at an expense of three hundred million dollars a year, sufficient to furnish ten tons of limestone to every acre of Virginia land, an amount twenty times the Nation's appropriation for agriculture; and even this is largely used in getting new lands ready for the bleeding process, instead of reviving those that have been practically bled to death.

As for me, I shall simply take the results which prove profitable on the accurately conducted experiment fields of the University of Illinois, one of which is located only seven miles from Poorland Farm, and on the same type of soil, I shall try to profit by that positive information, and await the acc.u.mulation of conclusive data relating to tile-drainage and other possible improvements of uncertain practicability for "Egypt."

Say, but our soil is acid! The University soil survey men say that the acidity is positive in the surface, comparative in the subsurface, and superlative in the subsoil. Two of them insisted that the subsoil has an acid taste. The a.n.a.lysis of a set of soil samples collected near Heart-of-Egypt shows that to neutralize the acidity of the surface soil will require seven hundred and eighty pounds of limestone per acre, while three tons are required for the first twenty inches, and sixteen tons for the next twenty inches.

The tight clay stratum reaches from about twenty to thirty-six inches. Above this is a flour-like gray layer varying in thickness from an inch to ten inches, but below the tight clay the subsoil seems to be more porous, and I am hoping that we may lay tile just below the tight clay and then puncture that clay stratum with red clover roots and thus improve the physical condition of the soil. I asked Mr. Secor, a friend who operates a coal mine,--and farms for recreation,--if he thought alfalfa could be raised on this type of soil. He replied: "That depends on what kind of a gimlet it has on its tap root."

Some of the farmers down here tell me confidentially that "hardpan"

has been found on their neighbors' farms, but I have not talked with any one who has any on his own farm. I am very glad the University has settled the matter very much to the comfort of us "Egyptians,"

by reporting that no true "hardpan" exists in Illinois, although there are extensive areas underlain with tight clay, "of whom, as it were, we are which."

I am glad that the nitrogen-fixing and nitrifying bacteria do business chicfly in the surface soil, because we are not prepared to correct the acidity to any very great depth.

The present plan is to practice a six-year rotation on six forty-acre fields, as follows:

First year--Corn (and legume catch crop).

Second year--Part oats or barley, part cowpeas or soy beans.

Third year--Wheat.

Fourth year--Clover, or clover and timothy.

Fifth year--Wheat, or clover and timothy.

Sixth year--Clover, or clover and timothy.

This plan may be a grain system where wheat is grown the fifth year, only clover seed being harvested the fourth and sixth years, or it may be changed to a live-stock system by having clover and timothy for pasture and meadow the last three years, which may be best for a time, perhaps, if we find it too hard to care for eighty acres of wheat on poorly drained land.

In somewhat greater detail the system may be developed we hope about as follows:

First year: Corn, with mixed legumes, seeded at the time of the last cultivation, on perhaps one-half of the field. These legumes may include some cowpeas and soy beans and some sweet clover, but that is not yet fully decided upon.

Second year: Oats (part barley, perhaps) on twenty acres, cowpeas on ten acres, and soy beans on ten acres. The peas and beans are to be seeded on the twenty acres where the catch crop of legumes is to be plowed under as late in the spring as practicable.

Third year: Wheat with alsike on twenty acres and red clover on the other twenty, seeded in the early spring. If necessary to prevent the clover or weeds from seeding, the field will be clipped about the last of August.

Fourth year: Harvest the red clover for hay and the alsike for seed, and apply limestone after plowing early for wheat.

Fifth year: Wheat, with alsike and red clover seeded and clipped as before.

Sixth year: Pasture in early summer, then clip if necessary to secure uniformity, and later harvest the red clover for seed. Manure may be applied to any part of this field from the time of wheat harvest the previous year until the close of the pasture period.

Then it may be applied to the alsike only until the red clover seed crop is removed, and then again to any part of the field, which may also be used for fall pasture. To this field the threshed clover straw and all other straw not needed for feed and bedding will be applied. The application of raw phosphate will be made to this field, and all of this material plowed under for corn.

The second six years is to be a repet.i.tion of the first, except that the alsike and red clover will be interchanged, so as to avoid the development of clover sickness if possible; and to keep the soil uniform we may interchange the oats with the peas and beans.

This system provides for the following crops each year:

40 acres of corn;

20 acres of oats;

10 acres of cowpeas for hay

10 acres of soy beans for seed

80 acres of wheat

20 acres of red clover for hay

20 acres of alsike for seed

20 acres of red clover for seed

20 acres of alsike for pasture, except from June to August.

We also have some permanent pasture which we may use at any time that may seem best. If necessary we may cut all the clover for hay the fourth year, and we may pasture all summer the sixth year. We can pasture the corn stalks during the fall and winter when the ground is in suitable condition.

We plan to raise our own horses and perhaps some to sell. In addition we may raise a few dairy cows for market, but will do little dairying ourselves.

We expect to sell wheat and some corn, and if successful we shall sell some soy beans, alsike seed, and red clover seed.

How soon we shall be able to get this system fully under way I shall not try to predict; but we shall work toward this end unless we think we have good reason to modify the plan.

I hope to make the initial application of limestone five tons per acre, but after the first six years this will be reduced to two or three tons. I also plan to apply at least one ton per acre of fine-ground raw phosphate every six years until the phosphorus content of the plowed soil approaches two thousand pounds per acre, after which the applications will probably be reduced to about one-half ton per acre each rotation.

There are three things that mother and I are fully decided upon:

First, that we shall use ground limestone in sufficient amounts to make the soil a suitable home for clover.

Second, that we shall apply fine-ground rock phosphate in such amounts as to positively enrich our soil in that very deficient element.

Third, that we shall reserve a three-rod strip across every forty-acre field as an untreated check strip to which neither limestone nor phosphate shall ever be applied, and that we shall reserve another three-rod strip to which limestone is applied without phosphate, while the remaining thirty-seven acres are to receive both limestone and phosphate.

Thus we shall always have the satisfaction of seeing whatever clearly apparent effects are produced by this fundamental treatment, even though we may not be able to bother with harvesting these check strips separate from the rest of the field.

We have based our decision regarding the use of ground limestone very largely upon the long-continued work of the Pennsylvania Agricultural Experiment Station as to the comparative effects of ground limestone and burned lime, which is supported, to be sure, by all comparative tests so far as our Illinois soil investigators have been able to learn.

The practicability and economy of using the fineground natural phosphate has been even more conclusively established, as you already know, by the concordant results of half a dozen state experiment stations. There are only two objections to the use of the raw phosphate. One of these is the short-sighted plan or policy of the average farmer, and the other is the combined influence of about four-hundred fertilizer manufacturers who prefer to sell, quite naturally, perhaps, two tons of acid phosphate for $30, or four tons of so-called "complete" fertilizer for $70 to $90, rather than to see the farmer buy direct from the phosphate mine one ton of fine-ground raw rock phosphate in which he receives the same amount of phosphorus, at a cost of $7 to $9.

Until we can provide a greater abundance of decaying organic matter we may make some temporary use of kainit, in case the experiments conducted by the state show that it is profitable to do so.

In a laboratory experiment, made at college it was shown that when raw phosphate was shaken with water and then filtered, the filtrate contained practically no dissolved phosphorus; but, if a dilute solution of such salts as exist in kainit was used in place of pure water, then the filtrate would contain very appreciable amounts of phosphorus.