How does such treatment affect soils previously limed?
How may it sometimes improve sandy or clay soils?
The course to be pursued in such cases is to plow one inch deeper each year. By this means the soil maybe gradually deepened to any desired extent. The amount of uncongenial soil which will thus be brought up, is slight, and will not interfere at all with the fertility of the soil, while the elevated portion will become, in one year, so altered by exposure, that it will equal the rest of the soil in fertility.
Often where lime has been used in excess, it has sunk to the subsoil, where it remains inactive. The slight deepening of the surface plowing would mix this lime with the surface-soil, and render it again useful.
When the soil is light and sandy, resting on a heavy clay subsoil, or clay on sand, the bringing up of the mass from below will improve the texture of the soil.
As an instance of the success of deep plowing, we call to mind the case of a farmer in New Jersey, who had a field which had yielded about twenty-five bushels of corn per acre. It had been cultivated at ordinary depths. After laying it out in eight step lands (24 feet), he plowed it at all depths from five to ten inches, on the different lands, and sowed oats evenly over the whole field. The crop on the five inch soil was very poor, on the six inch rather better, on the seven inch better still, and on the ten inch soil it was as fine as ever grew in New Jersey; it had stiff straw and broad leaves, while the grain was also much better than on the remainder of the field.
What kind of soils are benefited by fall plowing?
There is an old anecdote of a man who died, leaving his sons with the information that he had buried a pot of gold for them, somewhere on the farm. They commenced digging for the gold, and dug over the whole farm to a great depth without finding the gold. The digging, however, so enriched the soil that they were fully compensated for their disappointment, and became wealthy from the increased produce of their farm.
Farmers will find, on experiment, that they have gold buried in their soil, if they will but dig deep enough to obtain it. The law gives a man the ownership of the soil for an indefinite distance from the surface, but few seem to realize that there is another farm below the one they are cultivating, which is quite as valuable as the one on the surface, if it were but properly worked.
Fall plowing, especially for heavy lands, is a very good means of securing the action of the frosts of winter to pulverize the soil. If it be a stiff clay, it may be well to throw the soil up into ridges (by ridging and back furrowing), so as to expose the largest possible amount of surface to the freezing and thawing of winter. Sandy soils should not be plowed in the fall, as it renders them too light.