(XLIII) If the land is wet, it should be drained with trough shaped ditches dug three feet wide at the surface and one foot at the bottom and four feet deep. Blind these ditches with rock. If you have no rock then fill them with green willow poles braced crosswise. If you have no poles, fill then with faggots. Then dig lateral trenches three feet deep and four feet wide in such way that the water will flow from the trenches into the ditches.
(CLV) In the winter surface water should be drained off the fields. On hillsides courses should be kept clear for the water to flow off. During the rainy season at the beginning of Autumn is the greatest risk from water. When it begins to rain all the hands should go out with picks and shovels and clear out the drains so that the water may flow off into the roads, and the crops be protected.
Of preparing the seed bed
(LXI) What is the first principle of good agriculture? To plough well. What is the second? To plough again; and the third is to manure. When you plough corn land, plough well and in good weather, lest you turn a cloddy furrow. The other things of good agriculture are to sow seed plentifully, to thin the young sprouts, and to hill up the roots with earth.
(V) Never plough rotten land[30] nor drive flocks or carts across it.
If care is not taken about this, the land so abused will be barren for three years.
Of manure
(V) Plan to have a big compost heap and take the best of care of the manure. When it is hauled out see that it is well rotted and spread. The Autumn is the time to do this.
(XXXVII) You can make manure of litter, lupine straw, chaff, bean stalks, husks and the leaves of ilex and of oak.[31]
(XXX) Fold your sheep on the land which you are about to seed, and there feed them leaves.[32]