DEEP PLOUGHING.

Globe, Volume XXIII, Issue 2166, 3 February 1881, Page 4

DEEP PLOUGHING.

The depth of ploughing—and here onr remarks are to be understood as having reference to breaking up as well as to spring ploughing for grain or hoed crops—is a matter which rests with the farmer, and one which should be governed by circumstances and vary with the character of the soil and the crop to be grown upon the land. A tough witch grass sod, taken up to be manured and after a few years laid down again, should be ploughed sufficiently deep to thoroughly cover the fertilisers applied to the land, without disturbing the inverted sod. Where ploughing is done in the spring to cover a light coat of manure spread on the surface, and the only object being to cover the manure, it should be ploughed as shallow as may bo consistent with good work—say not over four inches. In ordinary field practice on average soils seven inches may be regarded as about a fair depth; but in old fields, the top of whose subsoil* has been rendered firm and solid by the ploughings and tramping* of fifty or a hundred years into a crust as hard os (tons, the plough should be put down to such a depth as will allow it to crush this and destroy the impervious barriers, thus separating the lower from the upper soil. Bnt this cold subsoil must not be turned up in too great a quantity to be mingled with the upper soil at one ploughing. It must be done gradually, being loosened before it is fully incorporated with the surface soil or injurious results will follow. The old idea of deep ploughing for all crops and conditions of soil, and all season* of the year has long ago been discarded, as it justly deserved to be. Deep ploughing under proper conditions is good practice, but done without judgment i* a decided injury. Somo years ago it was asserted on good authority that the average depth of ploughing in the State of Now York was only four and a-half inches. It surely is not much more now, and we doubt if it is any more than that throughout New England generally. And yet what a loss in ploughing only four and a-half inches deep ! Untold treasures of fertility lie in all soils below this depth, and it is only necessary to make them available to the action of the elements by deeper ploughing and loosening of the soil to add to the present amount of plant food in very large amount.—“ American Cultivator.”