THE research that revealed the absurdity of our system of tillage was done as a hobby, at scarcely any expense other than time and the failure of the effort to produce the vegetables our family needed. The later work of demonstrating the workability of the idea on a field scale could not be done so simply or with little expense. There must be implements and power. They cost money. Time must be devoted to the project; whether it should be part-time or full-time had to be decided. If full-time was to be given to this project, it had to be planned on a self-supporting basis. To justify full-time, the area must be larger than could be found at reasonable rent near town. For such an area I had to go into the country beyond the influence of suburban costs .
Months were consumed in the development of a general plan. Some time was spent trying to find suitable property near the city that I could buy or trade for, develop, and later move to. None was found that could be bought on terms that would leave funds for operation. Failing in that, I decided to lease land and operate it while still living in town. The land selected was eight miles distant, but was otherwise very well suited for the work I expected to do. It was sandy loam soil, which would be more workable than the clay had been in the early stages. The owner's husband reserved for his own use the entire front of the farm along the highway. This provided a screen against too great curiosity concerning the strange methods about to be used.
The portion of this land that was most promising for cropping had been used all along by a neighbour farmer-gardener to grow corn and hay. Other areas had on occasion been put to garden crops. A good deal of the area had been virtually abandoned because the owner and her husband could not manage it themselves, and none of the neighbours would rent it.
After leasing the land on February 20th, 1939, I waited in vain for weather suitable for sowing rye or oats, later to be disced in as green manure. Rain fell almost incessantly. Until April 15th there was not more than half a day in any week when the land was dry enough to work. Oats bought for sowing had to be sold again. For green manure, I had to depend upon weeds the land would grow before it had to be prepared for a crop. This freak of the weather was to prove a serious handicap before the season was over. It prevented the creation of the single condition upon which success with crops is assured — an abundant supply of organic matter which may be worked into the land. (I did not realize then as I do now that it would have been possible simply to throw the seed on the land, even when it was too wet to work, and grow a green manure crop without stirring the land at all.)
Failure to establish green manure crops contributed heavily toward the financial failure of that first season's work. Had I sensed this in advance, much fruitless effort would have been saved; but, though the work was not rewarded financially, the gains in knowledge fully compensated for the monetary loss. Lessons learned through those experiences in the field made it possible thereafter to take advantage of weather rather than to be always its victim. For farmers such knowledge will be of inestimable value.
During those first rainy weeks I designed and built a crude device for locating the rows and establishing the places where seeds or plant roots were to be placed in those rows. I knew that in some circumstances green manure crops might grow so tall before the land could be worked that they could not then be completely incorporated. In such a case none of the customary planting or transplanting equipment could be used; for all machines for purposes of this kind are designed to operate by sliding through a fairly smooth soil surface. Any considerable amount of rubbish on the surface would make such implements useless. It was imperative, therefore, that I be prepared in advance to deal with plant debris on the surface, if green manure crops were so heavy that they could not be put into the ground completely. The outcome of that necessity was a marker which would roll over the land, smooth or otherwise, and, without furrows, indicate the rows and the hill spaces in them. Rolling rather than sliding motion was the obvious answer. The marker was made from two discarded wagon wheels. These were fitted on their rims with lugs that would " track " the land at one-foot intervals; the axle upon which they turned was designed for row widths of three, three and a half, four, and five feet. With this implement I felt confident that any surface, however encumbered with rubbish, could be planted.
I was to find later that its ability to negotiate a weedy surface was not the most notable virtue of this marker. Even more important was the fact that, every time a lug on the marker touched the ground, it compressed with some 150 pounds weight a vertical column of soil directly beneath the bottom of the track it made. This compression served to reconnect the soil particles which had necessarily been separated by the stirring of the surface. Pressing these particles together again restored what we may call the " wicking action " of the soil, enabling capillary water to rise without interruption to the bottom of the marker track. Anyone who has used an oil lamp will perceive the significance of this.
Compression was the principle upon which the marker worked. Where the idea originated, I do not know. Perhaps it was the result of an illustration we used to see in one of our soil text-books. The illustration was intended to show the student how a well-prepared seed-bed should look. The light colour of the surface soil indicated that this loose, " well-prepared " surface soil had been dried out by wind and sunshine —as is always true — even though the area presented was supposedly ideal for seed growth. Included in the picture was a heel print. The moist condition of this compressed spot, darker in colour, proved that capillary water climbed the vertical column of soil immediately under it. The comparatively dry condition of the rest of the soil surface showed that, in the loose soil, the capillary connection with the deep underground water supply had been broken. Thirty years ago, the picture meant nothing more than a clean-cut photo of an exceptionally well-prepared soil in good tilth (according to established standards). Fitted into the new scheme of soil management, it becomes a significant guide to better methods of planting seeds and transplanting plants.
It is impossible now to trace the effects of the old picture on my thinking about soil conditions during a thirty-year period. But that scarcely matters. The important thing is that after thirty years the idea actually incubated. At the time of writing this, the incubation of the idea is about as far as the process has gone. No one, either among practical farmers or among professional agriculturists, seems willing to accept an idea so different from conventional methods of planting and transplanting.
Every crop we planted in 1939 and 1940 was established by use of this compression marker. More than eighty-five thousand plants were involved, without any artificial watering whatever. Seventy-five thousand of the plants were shipped from southern Georgia in hot weather, yet no water was used in transplanting them. In some cases this may have been unwise, but this was not the chief cause of the considerable loss of plants in 1939. In 1940 there were no losses worth mentioning.
Our method involved encasing the plant roots in soil which was already being supplied with capillary water from below. Roots laid in the marker track and covered with firmed earth were considered properly set. They stood erect by next morning, always. Exceptions to this rule were sweet potatoes set in soil where the quantity of organic matter disced into the soil had been greatest. In 1939 only one field had enough organic matter, and this was the accumulation of several years of dead weed stalks. The field was on a high ridge, and was of sand so light that summer crops had died there for lack of water. The only plants that could survive the hot summers were uncultivated ones like weeds. It was impossible, therefore, for the owner to rent this land to the neighbouring gardeners or to manage it successfully himself That is how it happened to have grown up in weeds for several years. When I leased it, this field became the first area on which I tried to develop workable methods of discing organic matter into the soil. The weed debris was so heavy in places that it could not all be worked in, and some spots tracked by the marker failed to become moist with capillary water afterward, because a layer of underlying weed fragments would absorb the water and keep it from rising to he surface.
Such details had to be learned. Before we learned them in 1939, we lost a good percentage of the sweet-potato plants that were set in this field, because the particular site they occupied was underlain by absorbent organic matter that kept their roots from getting water. From this experience we learned to scan the marker tracks in transplanting; if the bottoms were not moist, even on a hot day, we searched for the underlying organic matter that prevented moisture from rising to the surface. A year later, after four-foot rye had been put into the surface of this field,- sweet potatoes planted exactly the same way were 90 per cent. perfect stand. This is good for sweet potatoes in any situation. Success depended upon the actual presence of capillary moisture in the marker track.
One highly amusing incident occurred in this connection. While the tomato field was being transplanted in 1939, one of the neighbours, having observed that something unusual was being done in our field, came over to inspect the technique we were following in transplanting. When he saw that we were using such " careless " methods, he shook his head sadly and cautioned us that plants handled so recklessly could not grow satisfactorily. His displeasure was evident when he left the field a little while later. He considered us a stiff-necked lot, unwilling to learn from a farmer of more experience. Later in the season, when we were picking the crop, he got as much pleasure from complimenting us on our superior stand of plants as we did from noting his changed point of view. He even enjoyed laughing at himself; but the whole situation was still mysterious to him.
The conventional method of transplanting large areas such as commercial gardens, tobacco fields, and so on, usually involves heavy machinery, made heavier by the load of water it must carry to provide a little for each plant. Our method, involving only two people, a hoe, and a basketful of plants, seems ridiculously inadequate by comparison. The results of this simple method, though, were far better both in 1939 and in 1940 than the customary method achieved locally. With the exception of sweet potatoes, we had better stands of plants than our neighbours had in 1939; and in 1940, because of the extremely wet condition of the land, we could go ahead while our neighbours had to wait for the land to dry out enough for their horses or tractors and transplanting machines to operate. (Incidentally, about five weeks elapsed before the land was dry enough.) The dry weather of 1939 and the excessively wet weather of 1940 seemed not to affect our results. The catch of tomato plants was virtually perfect each season.
It may seem that an unwarranted amount of space has been used in this discussion of the preparation of the land for transplanting and in describing the methods used. Justification for such extended elaboration of this matter is found in its illustrative value; for, if any doubt remains in the reader's mind as to the folly of ploughing, comparison of the water relationships that follow ploughing and discing ought quickly to dispel any such misgivings.
If rye three feet tall had been ploughed in on this land, no capillary water would have been available to plant roots next day, or even next week. Scientists agree on the drying effect of great quantities of organic matter ploughed in, though their reasoning on the subject is somewhat different from mine. The behaviour of these plants, set in compacted, disced soil, should for ever dispose of any faith in ploughing. It proves perfectly the superiority of discing when great quantities of organic matter are involved.
If the purpose of breaking the land is the removal of rubbish so that it will not interfere, then the mouldboard plough is the only implement to use in starting preparation of the land for crops. It happens, however, that the crying need is for a soil surface similar to that which we find in Nature—with all the organic matter near enough to the surface for plant roots to be able to appropriate the products of its decay. This being the object, the way to attain it is to use an implement that is incapable of burying the rubbish it encounters; in other words, any implement except the plough.
If space permitted, much could be said about the behaviour of crops on land prepared in the unorthodox fashion that has been described. The first season's crops did not produce a satisfactory yield, because little organic matter was available to supply the needed materials for nutriment. Sweet potatoes on the disced weed field were the lone exception, and, had their stand been good, they would have returned a profit that season.
The selection of sweet potatoes as a commercial crop for this latitude (only ten miles from Lake Erie) will puzzle many readers. I had observed that they grew successfully in home gardens; that they had earlier been a commercial crop locally; and that yields locally averaged much higher than the average for the United States. A successful exotic crop would enable me to succeed in a market dominated by some of the country's most capable gardeners. No novice could compete with these skilled men in the production of cauliflower, cabbage, sweet corn, or lettuce; but I hoped that, with a high yielding, non-competing crop, I might survive and make some money.
My confidence in the sweet potato arose from the fact that, many years earlier, on very thin soil, I had produced a small amount of this crop, the yield of which had figured about twelve hundred bushels per acre. The fact that this amazing yield was produced by soil treatment practically identical with the new methods I intended using encouraged me to hope that I could duplicate that small-scale result on a field basis. While I failed to do this, careful appraisal of the behaviour of the crop justified some important constructive conclusions.
For one thing, theoretically, the sweet potato crop requires 120 days of frost-free weather to mature. Weather records show that in Ohio, where I was planting, about four months intervene between the last spring frost and the first frost of the autumn. However, in 1939, these plants produced a mature crop in just sixty days, proving that the time element is not as important as the ready availability of the wanted plant foods. Owing to the poor stand of plants, as well as to the slow start most of them got, the yield for the field was but little above the average for the country; but the speedy showing of those which did get a fair start made it impossible to overlook the implication that better mixing in of organic matter with the soil would have resulted in a tremendous crop. This one and a half acre field alone could easily have paid the entire expense of machinery and operating costs of the whole farm and produced a profit besides.
Of equal importance was the discovery that sweet potatoes produced in this relatively dry climate may not require artificial curing as do the roots produced in the much more humid climate of the South-eastern States. My crop of 1939 could have been stored successfully just as the roots came out of the ground. It is by no means certain that the crops of other seasons would be as free from moisture as those of 1939; indeed, it is known that sweet potatoes produced in my area of Ohio do rot easily; however, it may be true that sweet potatoes produced largely from organic decay are less moist than those produced in a highly mineral soil. This possibility deserves investigation.
My faith in the sweet potato as the potential mortgage lifter was high, and I had acted accordingly, by transplanting five acres of the farm to this crop. None of the land except this first field had any considerable amount of organic matter--only the self-grown weeds. The catch of plants from the other fields was excellent, but because the substance was not in the land, these fields did not produce marketable roots. In 1940 the only sweet potatoes set out were put on the field that had done best in 1939. The catch of plants was very good, at least 90 per cent.; but during the entire growing season there was not enough heat and moisture (at the same time) to permit the plants to produce a satisfactory crop.
Considering all of the evidence, it seems that, for all but the occasional, exceptionally cool seasons, the sweet potato is a dependable crop for this section, provided the land is well filled with organic matter at the surface, and provided the transplanting is properly done. It should be remembered that all of these plants were from southern Georgia, and were transplanted without watering after having been two or three days on the road in hot weather. Even with these handicaps, the catch, wherever capillary water was available when the plants were set out, was exceptional. I expect, therefore, to continue to try to produce sweet potatoes on a limited scale. Whether the product could be stored without artificial drying is really unimportant in this section, for the Cleveland market would at any time absorb the production of a few hundred local acres. The first-grade potatoes I grew in 1939 brought a premium price throughout the season.
When the outcome of the 1939 season had been analysed, it seemed fair to assume that, had the supply of organic matter been sufficient in all fields, the sweet potato crop alone would have made it a profitable season. With this view of the matter, I was not discouraged, even though considerable money had been lost in 1939. I could not foresee, of course, that the 1940 season would be so extremely wet in the months when crops are usually getting started that the plants could not even be put in. This was true throughout this entire section. None of the gardeners succeeded in planting any considerable part of their usual acreage of vegetables. Some prepared the land repeatedly, even to distribution of the fertilizers, then did not have an opportunity to plant. I was lucky enough to get tomatoes into the ground on the only day between May 25th and July 4th that the work could have been done. Many fields were set to tomatoes in mid-July with plants that were ready for setting in mid-May. It was a very unusual season in every way. Therefore, since I received income from only about two acres in 1940, quite naturally I did not make any money. The season's effort just about paid for itself.
Like 1939, 1940 taught me some important lessons, even though it disappointed me financially. There was ample organic matter, in the form of tall rye, on every field. Seasonal conditions made it impossible to get the rye disced in at a suitable time for planting the planned crops. With the exception of a few minor crops, the entire farm income was from tomatoes, beans, and cucumbers. Each of these crops was handicapped by weather conditions, but the results in each instance were encouraging and profitable.
The tomato crop around Cleveland in 1940 was disappointing. Many growers said it was the poorest season of their experience. Extremes of wet followed by drought, and again by wet weather, produced many cracked fruits. Though there were many such in my crop, there never was a time when it was impossible to get marketable tomatoes. Most growers had to abandon their early plantings even before their later acreage began to bear. I had but a single acre in cultivation. It increased in vigour as the season advanced, and the product was in good demand at premium prices all the time. Sometimes I got as much as 25 cents a peck above the top price in the Cleveland market. One reason for this was the exceptional weight of my packed pecks. Fifteen pounds is the standard weight of a peck of tomatoes. In 1940 my crop averaged more than that. It was not unusual for a peck to weigh sixteen pounds, and many weighed seventeen. Most local tomatoes in 1940 weighed from ten to fourteen pounds to the peck. The exceptional weight of nine, and the quality it indicates, justified the premium prices I received.
The bean crop was extraordinary, too, for several reasons. At the outset, six feet of rye had to be disced down before the field could be planted to beans. And when I say down, the expression is accurate. In many places so thick a layer of rye covered the surface that the discs did not actually touch the ground. There was no help for it. If beans were to be planted in this land, they had to be planted in spite of this condition, and so they were. The marker was run over the field, spacing rows three feet apart. Wherever the marker had " walked " over the straw without even parting it, the straw was parted by hand and the beans were planted on the solid ground, covered with a hoeful of earth from nearby, and left to their fate. The stand of beans was so perfect that it was commented upon by trained agricultural men who saw the plot during the succeeding weeks. This indicated to me, at least, that a finely worked seed-bed may not be essential to success. Compare this method of planting with the one described by Ben Ames Williams, as I have quoted him on page 33 from Come Spring.
Since it was impossible, with the marker I had, to plant rows closer together than three feet, it seemed a waste of good space to plant this area to beans only; therefore alternate rows were planted to cucumbers. This spaced the cucumbers properly; moreover, it gave me an additional crop to grow and observe. Limitations imposed by distance made it difficult for me to get the bean crop to market, as well as to get labour out from the town to pick it, so it was well that no more beans than I harvested had to be handled.
Cucumbers proved more significant as objects of observation than as a source of income. Yet, considering that this was ordinary farm land, converted to experimental garden use by the discing in of a single crop of rye, it is not surprising that beans produced better than cucumbers. Beans are better suited to hard soil conditions than are cucumbers. Indeed, cucumbers are quite insistent upon an abundance of readily available plant food — preferably decay products. In this raw soil, only partly prepared for a good cucumber crop, the quality of the fruit that actually matured was extremely high. Every cucumber was as dark green as if it had been grown under perfect growing conditions. Several grocers who took quantities said they expected to sell them as hothouse grown. There would have been no fraud, for the quality was there. From the excellent quality of this fruit, it may be determined that any land that had been prepared by a succession of disced-in crops should produce cucumbers of unsurpassed quality and in great quantity.
Beans, however, were more remarkable in their response to this supposedly crude environment. Apart from the perfect germination already described, they continued mass blooming as long as there was available water in the soil to permit it. The plants held buds for blossoms, blossoms, immature beans, and beans ready for picking all at the same time through a long period—several weeks. Naturally, the yield had to be harvested over a correspondingly long period. Five pickings—all full but the last—were required. And, even after we had quit harvesting beans for market, enough late-set beans matured to provide plenty of seed for a good-sized bean field again.
Such persistence of cropping is unusual in beans. Most bean plantings are abandoned after one picking, or at most two. One local gardener who was equipped for irrigation told me that he had used nitrogen in order to stimulate bean cropping. He seemed proud to announce that he had had to pick his plants twice—after using nitrogen and irrigation. My crop was produced without either, and under conditions that assuredly would have made irrigation profitable at certain stages. Considering the severity of the prevailing weather conditions, the fact that these beans produced two hundred bushels of marketable beans per acre seems to me quite important. It seems to indicate that, if the land were so thoroughly filled with organic matter at the surface that it would again begin to look black, it should then grow bean plants that would commence yielding in spring and not cease until frost in the autumn.
In all of this, no mention has been made of the fact that in 1940 no nitrogen fertilizer was used anywhere on the farm. That fact is one of outstanding importance in summing up the significance of the project. It will be obvious to any experienced reader that such crops as I have described could not have been produced without a plentiful supply of nitrogen. It will be equally clear that land of ordinary quality could not have supplied the necessary nitrogen for good quality garden products. Only black land—black with decaying organic matter — is ever expected to produce good crops without the addition of some nitrogen in the form of fertilizers. Indeed, without applied nitrogen, such land usually produces no marketable crop at all; and the plants exhibit a yellowish, rather than a healthy, dark green, colour. Usually, too, no crop at all results from such nitrogen-starved plants.
As far as I was concerned, these plants were nitrogen-starved, for I had intentionally omitted the use of nitrogen. The reasons for its omission would be difficult to state, but in my home experience we often had too much, rather than too little, nitrogen, and for that reason we often suffered serious crop setbacks. Because of these unfavourable experiences with nitrogen, I have never believed very strongly in its application.
Full explanation of how my recent crops managed to get a sufficient nitrogen supply is given in a later chapter, the strangest, perhaps, of the whole book. It partakes of the mystery of Aladdin, along with the romance of smuggling, but it is a very true story withal. Reserved for another chapter, too, is the story of how these crops defeated insects and diseases. The success of the crops was in no way due to the use of insecticides, fungicides. Or other means of battling pests, for none of these aids was used.
The net result of these two years of fieldwork was the conviction on my part that the human animal assumes in error that he can really improve on Nature's well-designed arrangements for nourishing plants. Faced with the necessity of thwarting competitive growth in order to promote the plants he favours, man has rashly overstepped the bounds of biological propriety by performing operations on the soil which waste the very plant foods his own plants require. The troubles he has, then, are the consequences of this original error. My tests have proved that, to avoid trouble, man needs only to return to methods imitative of Nature's own. Quite a cheerful discovery, that.
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