FALLOW LAND

Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 124, 27 May 1937, Page 26

FALLOW LAND

TO AID CROPPING ,

All land in the vegetable garden should be "fallowed" or kept vacant for a few months periodically, as successive and continuous cropping exhausts the more soluble salts in the soil. By a period of rest and exposure to the frosts or sun decomposition of the soil particles is accelerated, arid the fertilising constituents made available for the following crop; exposure to the air has also a very beneficial effect in sweetening soil.

The best time to do this in hot, dry districts is the summer, and in cold localities, where heavy frosts are experienced, the autumn and winter seasons. This gives the soil an opportunity to recuperate, and to lay in a stock of nitrogen,, which is taken up from the rain.

To get the most benefit from these agencies, the soil should be dug as deeply and roughly as possible, having all lumps unbroken, and presenting as much surface to the air as possible. In the winter the frost-will penetrate through the soil, and will break down all lumps to a fine tilth; and in the summer, in warm, dry districts, the sun and hot, dry winds act in a similar manner. i

In a well-kept vegetable garden the ground should rarely, be idle, for as soon as a crop is off. it should either be planted again with another crop or sown down to produce a green crop for digging in or roughly dug and fallowed as mentioned. Both the condition of the soil and its fertility will be greatly improved.