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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.



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