Success with Small Fruits by Edward Payson Roe
page 86 of 380 (22%)
page 86 of 380 (22%)
![]() | ![]() |
|
gardener, who thus expends a little thought and farsighted labor will
at last secure results that will surpass his most sanguine hopes, and that, too, from land that would otherwise be as hard as Pharaoh's heart. Before passing from this soil to that of an opposite character, let me add a few words of caution. Clay land should never be stirred when either very wet or very dry, or else a lumpy condition results that injures it for years. It should be plowed or dug only when it crumbles. When the soil is sticky, or turns up in great hard lumps, let it alone. The more haste the worst speed. Again, the practice of fall plowing, so very beneficial in latitudes where frosts are severe and long continued, is just the reverse in the far South. There our snow is rain, and the upturned furrows are washed down into a smooth, sticky mass by the winter storms. On steep hillsides, much of the soil would ooze away with every rain, or slide downhill en masse. In the South, therefore, unless a clay soil is to be planted at once, it must not be disturbed in the fall, and it is well if it can be protected by stubble or litter, which shields it from the direct contact of the rain and from the sun's rays. But cow- peas, or any other rank-growing green crop adapted to the locality, is as useful to Southern clay as to Northern, and Southern fields might be enriched rapidly, since their long season permits of plowing under several growths. Lime and potash in their various forms, in connection with green crops, would give permanent fertility to every heavy acre of Southern land. In my judgment, however, barnyard manure is not surpassed in value by any other in any latitude. If one owned clay land from which |
|