The Summer-fallow
Categories:
CONTROL OF SOIL MOISTURE
Bare land loses in total plant-food, but may make a
temporary gain in available fertility. The practice of leaving a field
uncropped for an entire season has been abandoned in good farming
regions. Where moisture is in scant supply, and a soil is thin, there
continue instances of the summer-fallow. In a crop-rotation containing
corn and wheat, the corn-stubble land is left unbroken until May or
June, and then plowed. In August it is plowed again, and fitted for
seeding to wheat. The practice favors the killing of weeds, and the
soil at seeding time may contain more water than would have been the
case if a crop had been produced, because its mellow condition enables
the farmer to hold within it nearly all the moisture that a shower may
furnish after the second plowing.