Preparation.
The preparation of the soil should be complete and thorough. It may be stated, as an axiomatic truth, that the soil cannot be prepared for trees as well after they are planted as it can before, and nothing is to be gained by planting the trees in poorly prepared land. Better by all means to spend a year or more in getting the land in shape.
If the land is covered with a growth of timber, this should be cleared away and the ground cultivated for a year at least before the trees are set. Corn is probably the best crop to grow on new land, and at the last working cowpeas should be sowed. On fairly good land this will be sufficient, but on poorer ground the land should be continued in cultivation another year, sowing it down in beggarweed, cowpeas, soja beans, or velvet beans. These crops should be plowed into the soil in autumn or early winter, after they are dead and dry.
On lands which have been cultivated for some time, these same crops should be sowed for one season previous to planting, at least. Every effort should be made to insure a good stand and a good growth. Inoculation of the seed with nitrogen-gathering germs will help, and a good fertilizer, such as the one recommended for these crops elsewhere, should be applied. Nothing will insure a good growth in the young trees so well as the nitrogen and humus added to the soil by leguminous crops. Stable manure may also be used to advantage.
The ground should be deeply and thoroughly broken with a two-horse plow. In many cases the soil conditions will be greatly improved by the use of a subsoil plow, running it after the ordinary plow so as to break and loosen the soil to a depth of twelve or fifteen inches, or even more.
CHAPTER IX.
WHAT VARIETIES TO PLANT.
What varieties shall I plant? An easy question to ask—a difficult one to answer; for, though the one attempting a reply may know something of varieties, their size, quality and prolificness, there is always an unknown personal equation entering into the problem.