THE world's first agricultural station was established in England a century ago. At that time its only aims were to learn why England's soils would no longer grow such good crops as formerly, and to discover remedies. Since this beginning, similar institutions have been set up in most of the other countries of the world. There are more than fifty experiment stations in the United States. Some states support more than one, each independent, though all are under the same government. All but a few of these clinics have as a major objective the study of soil problems, and some of them have carried out soil experimental work which shows the effect of given treatments for as long as fifty to seventy-five years.
Such an array of long continued organized effort to determine the facts about the soil makes it seem improbable that we should need to inquire at this late date as to what soil is. Yet, like electricity and a number of other very important and familiar things, the soil has never been adequately defined. Nor is it expected that it will be defined now. It is hoped to arrive in this chapter at a more practical understanding of the soil than we have hitherto had. It certainly is true that, if we could not manage electricity any better than we manage our soil, we could never enjoy the long periods of uninterrupted service that we now have. As it is, we do so completely know how to manage electrical energy that it almost never disappoints us. Soil, by contrast, seldom ever comes up to our expectations, even though experts have been trying for generations to solve its problems. It should be remembered, too, that knowledge of electricity is a comparatively modern thing. Edison first made his lamp glow a little more than fifty years ago. Consider what has happened since. Electricity has become the ideal servant of man; it is the only one that obeys an order instantly the order is given. The merest touch of a button or flip of a switch, and your servant is there on the dot. This satisfactory harnessing of electrical energy has been accomplished since the beginning of Edison's experiments.
Compare this amazing progress with the almost complete lack of basic progress in agriculture. Considering that hunger first urged men to activity, we know that man began to cultivate his own food plants as soon as he wearied of the arduous travel and search for them where they grew wild. This happened necessarily quite early in the history of the race. How early, nobody knows, for history could not be written by hungry men; and until a dependable agriculture had been established, hunger at times was inescapable. Soils had been cultivated, worn out, and blown away long before historic times, if we may judge by the tier on tier of buried cities in what is now desert. The establishment of a city anywhere presupposes an abundant food supply nearby; so, when archaeologists stumble upon the buried ruins of cities built one on top of another, we know that the local soils at one time supported a considerable population.
Naturally you would expect an art as old as agriculture, and as fundamental, to be developed to a fine state of perfection. At least, it would be expected to be far ahead of so recent an art as the use of electricity. Yet the history of agriculture has been a continuous series of disappointments. No race of people ever remained to solve the problems of the area it had worn out. Instead, as fast as the race had harvested the cream of fertility from one area, it sold; or just left, the land to its successors and moved on to richer fields. The following quotation, written at the time of the California Gold Rush, is interesting in this connection:
Some pains have been taken in this report to prove that one thousand millions of dollars, judiciously expended, will hardly restore the one hundred million acres of partially exhausted lands in the Union to that richness of mould, and strength of fertility for permanent cropping, which they possessed in their primitive state. (1)
This testifies eloquently to the fact that soil deterioration had made great progress in America nearly one hundred years ago. Many of our best informed experts on soils would agree that, for all our effort of the past generation, we have barely held our own. The average yield of most field crops for any ten-year period that may be selected will not be much larger than the average for the decade of 1870-80. We ought to have done better, surely.
Everybody agrees, of course, that we ought to have done better; and everybody would be glad to be told how — if any-body knows. The antiquity of our agricultural lore should have been an advantage, but it appears not to have been, because nobody ever actually conquered the problems of the soil he happened to occupy. Instead, people ran away from those problems and proceeded to create the same problems in a new place. Americans, as a people, did not, therefore, really set out seriously to study the situation until the supply of squatter territory was exhausted. In consequence in the United States we have no valuable inherited lore of the soil.
In addition to the advantage of time, the farmer has had another advantage of obvious value which he has never used. He has had before his eyes, in every wooded country, a perfect example of soil maintenance. And it is said that seeing is believing. Yet, the farmer has seen, but he has not believed. He has seen the soft green foliage of the nearby woodland unaffected by the droughts which damage his crops. He has seen weeds actually topping the fence that surrounded his cornfield while his corn was suffering from lack of water. The same weather prevails in the woodland and in the hedgerows as prevails in the farmer's fields; yet neither the wild crops of the woodland nor the weeds along the fence show any sign of thirst.
This example of the unploughed field, this evidence that trouble stops where the plough stops, has been almost universally overlooked. Note this masterful description, by an early American, of the untouched forest:
The soil we passed over this day was very good. Charming valleys bring forth like the land of Egypt. Grass grows as high as a man on horseback and the rivers roll down their waters to the sea as clear as crystal. Happy will be the people destined for so wholesome a situation, where they may live to the fullness of their days with much content and gaiety of heart. (2)
Unless cleared, or cut over, the forest continued its lush, rank growth. It was busy making lumber. It was converting into the finest imaginable walnut, gum, oak, cherry, maple, and pine the rotting leaves and other debris that lay on the ground just above the tree roots. In terms of to-day's living, the lovely woodwork of your floors, stairs, door frames, and other parts of your house is made largely from reconditioned material — from rotted leaves, rotted wood, and all manner of decayed material. This fact will bear remembering as you read further. It is important.
Almost everyone has had the pleasure of walking through a forest. Did you note uprooted trees? And did you wonder why the roots seemed to bring up chiefly a layer of surface soil ? The reason the uprooted tree disturbs only the surface soil is that the feeding roots are necessarily deployed in this zone. The deep roots of the tree provide anchorage against the wind, but it is the tiny, tender feeding roots in the surface layers of soil that do the real business of finding food for the tree. They need not go deep, for the water deep in the soil is brought up to them by capillarity in any case — just as the lampwick brings fuel to the flame. And the food supplied by these roots is chiefly the reconditioned material released when fallen leaves rot on the forest floor. Some new material, dissolved from the rock deeper in the soil, is included, of course; but much the greater part of the minerals used by plants of any kind growing in such an environment must be " second-hand " minerals. It is difficult to believe, when you study the beautiful grains of woods, that they are assembled from " scrap " materials. But in reality that is the way things are done in Nature.
This, then, is the shining example of successful soil maintenance which has always been observable by the farmer, if he would take notice. Perhaps because it was so near and so obvious, he has been unable to think of it as a lesson from which he should profit. There is more than a little of psychology in the failure of man to profit from the forest's demonstration — or the equally significant showing made by the grasslands which supported myriads of animals and yet gained a momentum of fertility year by year. To appreciate fully this psychological background will require time, for it involves the underlying reasons that caused ploughing to achieve its popularity. Apart from that, there are curious human factors almost inherent in the make-up of man himself.
Not the least of these inherent human traits that have served to perpetuate error in the farming business is the incorrigible feeling on the part of people, that they can be of assistance to plants in their growth. Though the statement appears at variance with our basic thinking, there is actually nothing that anybody can do to assist a plant that is growing in its natural environment. And when we grow plants in an artificial environment, the best we can possibly do is copy as closely as possible the essentials of the natural environment. You know how you swell with pride when you succeed handsomely with your flower or vegetable garden. You imagine you have really helped the plants to grow — and, in a sense, you have. Yet, probably you set them in an unsuitable environment, then proceeded further to sabotage (unconsciously) the natural provisions for the welfare of plants. You are perhaps not peculiar in this respect. Everyone else does essentially the same thing and feels just as proud as you do, in spite of the error of his ways.
The reader will, perhaps, find it difficult to believe some of the facts I am going to recount, for they reveal how truly we humans stand in our own light when we are attempting to grow plants. What I have to tell, however, is true in all respects and will illustrate adequately my present point.
Some years ago our family spent a holiday foraging the woods for ferns to set in a shaded corner of the house wall. We found ferns, and we found a seedling hemlock actually sitting atop a very flat stone, its roots covered with leaves. There was no connection with the earth. Admiring this tiny tree, I picked it up, literally, since it had no roots in the earth to resist, and brought it home to transplant. Because its root system was a perfectly flat arrangement, I took a spade and patted down a flat area of soil, set the young tree on this spot, covered its roots again with quite a lot of leaves brought in for the purpose, and considered it transplanted. It stands in the same spot to-day, having grown quite from the start. To my knowledge it has never been supplied artificially with any water, except during one very dry period in the first summer. The tree began to show signs of trouble then, so I poured one pail of water about its roots. Since it has become well established, nothing whatever has been done to assist it.
In mid-May or early June, 1941, my wife took a fancy to a maple tree three feet tall which she saw growing in a friend's garden fifty miles from our home. It was in full leaf, of course, so one would have supposed that transplanting would have presented a difficult problem. The friend dug it for us, and we packed it in the trunk of the car. Next morning when we first saw it, its leaves were badly wilted, though they were still as green as ever. I first put the roots in a pool until a hole could be prepared. This hole was dug in the driest kind of place. There was no sign of moisture even at the bottom of the eighteen-inch space dug out. Because of this extreme dryness, the hole was filled with water. In this water the tree was then placed, and the dirt that had been removed from the hole was slowly settled about the roots. The work was done slowly in order to avoid causing the water to overflow the sides of the hole. When the hole had been filled in again, the tree was set. Throughout the summer its leaves showed no sign of ill-effects from the transplanting experience. I should add that its treatment was not as fair a test as that of the hemlock, for my wife could not resist the temptation to water the maple occasionally. However, it is true that it went through many dry, hot days without being watered.
It has long since become axiomatic among scientists that the data supporting a given statement must not only be accurate but must be extensive enough to eliminate, within reasonable limits, the possibility of error in generalization. My next experiment involved operations on a much larger scale — the planting and care of an acre of tomato plants in each of the years 1939 and 1940. More than ten thousand plants were used during the two seasons, and the stand of plants was virtually 100 per cent. for each season and each acre field. Soil moisture conditions were quite different for the two seasons, but the success of the plants was very similar. The experiment established to my satisfaction, at least, the importance of two principles: first, that the naturally settled, tight condition of the soil (before we start to get it ready for transplanting operations) is desirable; and second, that such soil should not be disturbed if transplanting can be accomplished without disturbing it.
At the outset, the soil was disced thoroughly in order to destroy whatever vegetation was at that time growing on it. In the spring of 1939, there was little but a scattering stand of weeds. In 1940, rye fully three feet tall — a fair stand all over the surface — had to be disposed of. The disc harrow so completely mixed in even the rye crop that little sign was left of any of the cover vegetation. Following the mixing in of this decayable material, the land was marked off in rows. To do this marking, a specially designed implement was used which simply " tramped " over the field — behind the tractor, of course — firming the soil together again at points where plants were to be located. By exerting considerable pressure at each such point, this implement reconnected the capillary contacts which the discing had broken up. (To visualize the effect of pressing the soil together again, just recall what would be the effect of snipping the lamp wick above the oil level; then later sewing the pieces together again.) The natural wicking action of the soil — destroyed temporarily by the discing — was restored in the vertical column of soil just under the point where a plant was to be set. That this actually was the effect of this pressure we have plenty of evidence. Even though the soil surface was dry and the weather hot in 1939, the bottom of a great many of these " tracks " showed moist even in the middle of the day. Unless the capillary connection had been restored, this could not possibly have been true.
Transplanting was done in the simplest possible manner. The roots of each tomato plant, after being freed of all clinging soil, were laid in the prepared track, covered with as mellow earth as could be found nearby, and firmed in place by tramping. No attempt was made to place the plants upright. That is something that Nature will attend to. Thus, the plants were left lying flat on the ground; but they did not lie there long. By late afternoon every plant set in the forenoon was pointing its tip toward the sky; by the following morning every plant without exception was standing upright. No water was used in transplanting, or afterwards. Capillary water already in the soil was brought in from below — through the compressed column of soil beneath the site where each plant stood — and provided a dependable, continuous supply of moisture. No watering that could have been done at transplanting time could possibly have equalled this inherent natural supply. So, instead of going through a wilting period after transplanting, these plants (even though in some cases they were wilted when set) straightened up and never again, regardless of dry weather, showed signs of trouble from lack of water. And, which is additional proof of the validity of the method, blossoms which were on the plants when set often produced fruit. Any experienced gardener will recognize this as unusual.
In 1940 the entire acre was set in one day by an eleven-year-old boy and me, assisted by my daughter, who removed the plants from the flats for us. Moisture conditions were so different in 1940 that even less care was required, so we cut the work as short as possible. The boy literally dropped the plants and I covered them. He placed the plant roots in the proper space; I laid on a hoeful of as mellow earth as I could find in soil so soggy that we could barely walk over it without sinking in. For about five weeks after transplanting, this soil was too wet to be stirred. Several times, indeed, it was flooded. The plants in such wet conditions became purple, or purplish green. Yet, despite this extremely wet condition so long continued, this acre was later spoken of by neighbours as the finest field of tomatoes in the neighbourhood. And the plants produced without interruption from the appearance of the first fruit until frost. Some of the very finest fruit was on them when frost came.
This description of the transplanting method used should show conclusively that it pays not to disturb the natural provisions for supplying plants with their needs; and that, if those arrangements must be disturbed, they should be restored to normal before transplanting is done. It was necessary to dispose of the rye that was growing on this land in 1940. Had custom been followed, it would have been ploughed in; and in all probability tomatoes could not have been started successfully in it for a long time, if at all. As soon as the rye was disced in, the plant-setting could have followed immediately behind the marker. However, owing to the danger of late frosts, the actual placing of the plants was delayed until a week later.
In view of the extensive writings available on the proper procedure to be followed in transplanting, the method used with these plants will seem the rankest of carelessness. One of my neighbours thought so in 1939. He is a retired farmer and had learned something of the new theories upon which I was working.
In general, he approved the ideas; but, when he saw the strange equipment (the marker) being used and observed the plants being set in so unorthodox a manner, he offered a friendly warning that they would never grow. It was with a broad grin that he came to the field later on, when we were picking the fruit, to say that we had the best stand of plants he had seen all summer.
What he had mistaken for carelessness was, instead, my full confidence that the soil, unassisted, would take care of the plants if we did nothing to prevent it. He had always assumed toward transplants (as did everybody else) an attitude similar to that of the broody hen toward her unnatural brood of ducklings. The hen is frightened when the day-old balls of down slide easily into a pool of water. People are similarly astonished to find that plants can get along without the customary care given them by the human race, provided only that they are placed in their proper element. We were trying to put these plants into an exceptionally correct environment. The decaying rye was to be reconstructed into fine red tomatoes; and the necessary water for accomplishing this transformation was to be conducted from below to the roots of the plants, without the customary interruption at the ploughsole some six to eight inches under the surface of the soil. (This interruption, something which does not exist in Nature, consists of the layer of organic matter, like blotting paper, which the mouldboard plough sandwiches in between the subsoil and the disturbed upper layers.) We were copying as closely as possible the natural environment in which plants always seem to thrive; but our behaviour was so odd to anyone schooled in the customary ways of managing crops that it became disturbing to observers.
Much more might be said in support of this new conception of soil and the proper handling of it, but the reader will perhaps realize by now that Browning was right.
"God's in his heaven—
All's right with the World!"
There is nothing wrong with our soil, except our deliberate though unknowing interference, with the natural provisions for growing plants. Nothing is more obvious than the vigorous way in which Nature takes over when land has been abandoned by farmers. All through the South, farmers have for generations " rested " their land for a number of years between periods of cropping. This practice used to be criticized severely as an evidence of laziness, but agriculturists have discovered that it really has merit, and that soil so treated is considerably rejuvenated and will again produce satisfactory crops. The benefits to be derived from allowing land to lie idle are directly proportionate to the abundance of wild plants that spring up. Southern farmers of the old school never kept their crops so free from weeds that there would not be plenty of seed to germinate on any land that was left to itself for a season or two. The second and third seasons' growth of weeds registered, by their increased height and vigour, the benefit the new plants received from the decaying material produced the previous year. The longer the fields lay idle, the more completely they were restored to normal productiveness. If many years intervened between plantings, however, a young forest might have to be cleared off the land again, so farmers usually renewed cropping after three or four fallow seasons.
Such processes of soil renewal really should not be construed as idleness for the soil. In reality the so-called idle soil is working vigorously to re-establish a non-erodable surface. If there are enough weed seeds in the soil when it is abandoned, only a few years will be required for the surface to be properly " nailed down " again, so that run-off water will not be so plentiful or so effective in moving the soil minerals.
Many of the ills of the soil are those which we humans have induced. We could have avoided all the trouble we have had with the soil. But that we should have made precisely those mistakes which are now part of history is logical, when it is considered that the plough—now the worst curse of the land—was at the time it was invented a life-saver for the population. The reverential regard we have for it goes back to those early days when people escaped the starvation then threatening, only because the plough enabled them to handle larger areas of crops. This is more fully discussed in Chapter 4. It should be understood, however, that, while this book condemns ploughing without reservation, it is in no sense an indictment of the men who have recommended it throughout the years. The motives behind such recommendations were as deeply rooted in their natures as are the religious teachings of one's youth. It was my own good fortune to be compelled to make soil where none existed. The solution of this problem pointed unmistakably to the solution of most of our soil problems.
It is safe to say that if the invention of the disc harrow had preceded that of the mouldboard plough, and if planting and cultivating equipment had been designed to operate in the surface of plant residues it would have left, there would never have been a mouldboard plough. It should be clear that the immaculately clean material we now have on most of our farms cannot be called soil except by the most liberal literary licence. Our conception of the soil includes, of necessity, that it must be easy to work, and free from obstructions. It must be tidy. The fact is that untidiness to an extreme—a surface covered or filled with abundance of decaying plant tissues—is really the proper condition. We must, therefore, revise our ideas as to the nature of the material upon which we can depend for sustenance. We certainly cannot depend upon the almost white soils we now cultivate with the plough.
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