In dry-farming, water is the critical factor, and any
practice that helps to conserve water should be adopted. For that
reason, fallowing, which gathers soil-moisture, should be strongly
advocated. In Chapter IX another important value of the fallow will
be discussed.
In view of the discussion in this chapter it is easily understood
why students of soil-moisture have not found a material increase in
soil-moisture due to fallowing. Usually such investigations have
been made to shallow depths which already were fairly well filled
with moisture. Water falling upon such soils would sink beyond the
depth reached by the soil augers, and it became impossible to judge
accurately of the moisture-storing advantage of the fallow. A
critical analysis of the literature on this subject will reveal the
weakness of most experiments in this respect.
It may be mentioned here that the only fallow that should be
practiced by the dry-farmer is the clean fallow. Water storage is
manifestly impossible when crops are growing upon a soil. A healthy
crop of sagebrush, sunflowers, or other weeds consumes as much water
as a first-class stand of corn, wheat, or potatoes.
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