Lessons on Soil

by Edward J. Russell

CHAPTER X

THE SOIL AND THE COUNTRYSIDE

In this chapter we want to put together much of what we have learned about the different kinds of soil, so that as we go about the country we may know what to look for on a clay soil, a sandy soil, and so on.

We have seen that clay holds water and is very wet and sticky in winter, while in summer it becomes hard and dry, and is liable to crack badly. "It greets a' winter and girns a' summer," as one of Dr John Brown's characters said of his soil. Clay soils are therefore hard to dig and expensive to cultivate: the farmer calls them heavy and usually prefers to put them into grass because once the grass is up it lasts as long as it is wanted and never needs to be resown. But in the days when we grew our own wheat, before we imported it from the United States and other countries, this clay land was widely cultivated for wheat and beans. So long as wheat was 60/- to 100/- a quarter it was a very profitable crop, but, when some forty years ago it fell to 40/- and then lower still, the land either went out of cultivation like the "derelict" farms of Essex, or it was changed to grass land and used for cattle grazing. Great was the distress that followed; some districts indeed were years in recovering. But new methods came in: the land near London was used for dairy farming, and elsewhere it was improved for grazing, and the clay districts, although completely changed, are now more prosperous again. Many of the fields still show the ridges or "lands" in which, when they grew wheat, they were laid up to let the water run away, and many of them keep their old names, but these are the only relics of the old days. The land is not, and never was, very valuable. The roads are wide, and on either side have wide waste strips cut up roughly by horse tracks, cart ruts and ant hills. Bracken, gorse, rushes, thistles and brambles grow there, and you may find many fine blackberries in September. The coarse Aira grass is found with its leaves as rough as files. The villages are often built round greens which serve as the village playground, where the boys and young men now play cricket and football, and their forefathers practised archery, played quoits and other games. On a few village greens the Maypole can still be seen, whilst the stocks in which offenders were placed are also left in some places.

The hedges are often high and straggling, and there are numerous woods and plantations containing much oak. Some of the woods are very ancient and probably form part of the primeval forests that once largely covered England. Epping Forest in Essex, the Forest of Blean and the King's Wood in Kent, have probably never been cultivated land. In the days when ships were made of oak these woods and hedges were very valuable, but now they are of little use as sources of timber. Instead they are valued for quite another reason: they afford shelter for foxes and for game birds. The clay districts are and always have been famous for fox hunting; the Pytchley, Quorn, Belvoir, and other celebrated packs have their homes in the broad, clay, grassy vales of the Midlands. The vale of Blackmoor and other clay regions are equally famous. The plantations and hedgerows are fine places for primroses and foxgloves, while in the pastures, and especially the poor pastures, are found the ox-eyed daisy and quaking grass, that make such fine nosegays, as well as that sure sign of poverty, the yellow rattle. But many of these poor pastures have been improved by draining, liming, and the use of suitable manures. Although the roads are better than they were (see p. 30) they are still often bad and lie wet for weeks together in winter, especially where the hedges are high. Numerous brick and tile yards may be found and iron ore is not uncommon; in some places it is worked now, in others it is no longer worked and nothing remains of the lost industry save only a few names of fields, of ponds, or of cottages.

Fig. 47. Highly cultivated sand in Kent. Gooseberries are growing in the foreground, vegetables behind, and hops in background

A sandy soil is in so many ways the opposite of a clay soil that we shall expect to find corresponding differences in the look of the country. A sandy soil does not hold water: it may get water up from the subsoil to supply the plant (see p. 66), or, if it happens to lie in a basin of clay, it may even be very wet: otherwise it is likely to be too dry for ordinary plants. We may therefore look out for two sorts of sand country, the one cultivated because there is enough water for the crops, and the other not cultivated because the water is lacking. These can readily be found.

We will study the cultivated sands first. As sand is not good plant food (p. 43) these soils want a lot of manure, and so are not good for ordinary farmers. But they are very easy to cultivate—for which reason they are called light soils—and can be dug at any time; seeds can be sown early, and early crops can be got. Consequently these soils are very useful for men doing special work like fattening winter and spring sheep, or producing special crops like fruit or potatoes, and for market gardeners who grow all sorts of vegetables, carrots, parsnips, potatoes, peas, and so on. Fig. 47 is a view of a highly cultivated sandy region in Kent showing gooseberries in the foreground, vegetables behind, and a hop garden behind that again.