Dry-farming Author:William Macdonald Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III THE CONSERVATION OF SOIL MOISTURE THE most important problem in dry- farming, as already stated, is unquestionably that which deals with the co... more »nservation of soil moisture. Hardly a season passes but we hear of crops which have failed because of lack of rain; and this complaint is, unfortunately, not confined to any one particular district, but is more or less common to all parts of the West. "How can we control and conserve the soil moisture so as to save our crops in time of drought?" SoiI Water. Now, in order to answer this question, we must first understand how the soil holds its water, and the part it plays in the mystery of plant growth. Nor should we forget that the water-holding capacity of any soil is a most important factor in determining the value of farm lands—a matter which, so far as the writer is aware, has not yet been fully recognized in this country. It is also important to consider the way in which moisture may be dissipated or lost. In the first place, water, falling as rain upon a field, may be lost by a surface run-off, or by percolation in the case of loose, gravelly soil; or, lastly, by evaporation from the surface of the ground. It is plain, therefore, that if by any means we can lessen this loss of water from the soil a larger and surer crop-yield will follow. All farmers are aware of the vast importance of moisture to the growing crop; but perhaps few realize the enormous amount of water that is needed for even a normal crop. Numerous experiments have shown that from 300 to over 500 tons of water are required on the average to produce one ton of dry vegetable matter. In Wisconsin, King found that a two-ton crop of oat-hay required over 1000 tons of water per acre, which is equal to about nine inches of rainfall. Again, the amoun...« less