Therefore, you are likely to do better with
trees than with grain without summer-fallowing, although even for trees
it is a decided advantage to have more moisture stored in the subsoil
and the surface soil pulverized by more tillage.
Defects in Soil Moisture.
I have apricot trees that appear to be almost dead; all but a very few
small green leaves are gone, and they look bad, still I think they might
be saved if I only knew what to do.
Presumably your apricot tree is suffering from too much standing water
during the dormant season, or from a lack of water during the dry
season. The remedy would be to correct moisture conditions, either by
underdrainage for winter excess or by irrigation for summer deficiency.
When a tree gets into a position such as you describe, it should be cut
back freely and irrigation supplied, if the soil is dry, in the house
that the roots may be able to restore themselves and promote a new
growth in the top.
Dry Plowing for Soil and Weed Growth.
Is there any scientific reason to support the belief that it is
injurious to the soil to dry-plow it for seeding to grain this fall and
winter? Will dry-plowing now cause a worse growth of filth after the
rains than the customary fallowing in the spring? Should the stubble be
burned, or plowed under!
The points against dry-plowing to which you allude may arise from two
claims or beliefs: first, that turning up land to the sun has a tendency
to "burn out the humus"; second, that dry-plowing may leave the land so
rough and cloddy that a small rainfall is currently lost by evaporation
and leaves less moisture available for a crop than if it is plowed in
the usual way after the rains.
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