Crops and Methods for Soil Improvement

by Alva Agee

If the application is light, and may barely be equal to immediate demand, it is better practice to put on the lime when preparing the seed-bed for the wheat or other small grain in which the clover will be sown. It should never be mixed with the fertilizer nor applied with the seed. The lime should go into the soil a few days, or more, prior to the seeding. The soil having been put into a condition favorable to plant life, the seeding and the use of commercial fertilizers should proceed as usual.

Lime should never be mixed with manure in the open air, but it is good practice to plow manure down, and then to use lime as indicated above, if needed. If manure and lime must be used after the land has been plowed, the lime should be disked well into the soil before the manure is applied, and it is advisable that the interval between the two applications be made as long as possible.

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CHAPTER IV

ORGANIC MATTER

Office of Organic Matter.—The restoration of an impoverished soil to a productive state usually is a simple matter so far as method is concerned. It may be a difficult problem for the individual owner on account of expense or time involved, but he has only a few factors in his problem. Assuming that there is good drainage, and that the lime requirement has been met, the most important consideration is organic matter. A profitable agriculture is dependent upon a high percentage of humus in the soil. Average yields of crops are low in this country chiefly because the humus-content has been greatly reduced by bad farming methods.

Turning down organic matter with a gang plow..

Nature uses organic matter in the following ways:

1. To give good physical condition to the soil. The practical farmer appreciates the importance of this quality in a soil. Clayey soils are composed of fine particles that adhere to each other. They are compact, excluding air and failing to absorb the water that should be held in them. The excess of water finally is lost by evaporation, and the sticky mass becomes dry and hard. The incorporation of organic matter with clay or silt changes the character of such land, breaking up the mass, and giving it the porous condition so essential to productiveness. Improved physical condition is likewise given to a sandy soil, the humus binding the particles together.