'What will the wheat and straw on this acre be worth this year?'
'Nothing, as I shall not cut the ground over.'
'Then it appears that you have lost, in what you have actually expended, and the wheat you would have harvested, had the ground been dry, $36, a pretty large sum for one acre.'
'Yes I see,' said the farmer."
While Rye may be grown, with tolerable advantage, on lands which are less perfectly drained than is necessary for Wheat, there can be no doubt that an increase of more than the six and two-thirds bushels needed to make up the drainage charge will be the result of the improvement.
While Oats will thrive in soils which are too wet for many other crops, the ability to plant early, which is secured by an early removal from the soil of its surplus water, will ensure, one year with another, more than twelve and a half bushels of increased product.
In the case of Potatoes, also, the early planting will be a great advantage; and, while the cause of the potato-rot is not yet clearly discovered, it is generally conceded that, even if it does not result directly from too great wetness of the soil, its development is favored by this condition, either from a direct action on the tubers, or from the effect in the air immediately about the plants, of the exhalations of a humid soil.
An increase of from five to ten per cent. on a very ordinary crop of potatoes, will cover the drainage charge, and with facilities for marketing, the higher price of the earlier yield is of much greater consequence.
Barley will not thrive in wet soil, and there is no question that drainage would give it much more than the increased yield prescribed above.
As to hay, there are many wet, rich soils which produce very large crops of grass, and it is possible that drainage might not always cause them to yield a thousand pounds more of hay to the acre, but the quality of the hay from the drained soil, would, of itself, more than compensate for the drainage charge. The great benefit of the improvement, with reference to this crop, however, lies in the fact that, although wet, grass lands,—and by "wet" is meant the condition of undrained, retentive clays, and heavy loams, or other soils requiring drainage,—in a very few years "run out," or become occupied by semi-aquatic[pg 169] and other objectionable plants, to the exclusion of the proper grasses; the same lands, thoroughly drained, may be kept in full yield of the finest hay plants, as long as the ground is properly managed. It must, of course, be manured, from time to time, and care should be taken to prevent the puddling of its surface, by men or animals, while it is too wet from recent rain. With proper attention to these points, it need not be broken up in a lifetime, and it may be relied on to produce uniformly good crops, always equal to the best obtained before drainage.