y to give the roots ample feeding-space. Good
tillage, which is too often neglected, is valuable.
Careful seed-selection is perhaps even more needed for rice than for any
other crop. Consumers want kernels of the same size. Be sure that your
seed is free from red rice and other weeds. Drilling is much better
than broadcasting, as it secures a more even distribution of the seed.
The notion generally prevails that flooding returns to the soil the
needed fertility. This may be true if the flooding-water deposits much
silt, but if the water be clear it is untrue, and fertilizers or
leguminous crops are needed to keep up fertility. Cowpeas replace the
lost soil-elements and keep down weeds, grasses, and red rice.
Red rice is a weed close kin to rice, but the seed of one will not
produce the other. Do not allow it to get mixed and sowed with your rice
seed or to go to seed in your field.
SECTION XLIX. THE TIMBER CROP
Forest trees are not usually regarded as a crop, but they are certainly
one of the most important crops. We should accustom ourselves to look on
our trees as needing and as deserving the same care and thought that we
give to our other field crops. The total number of acres given to the
growth of forest trees is still enormous, but we should each year add to
this acreage.
Unfortunately very few forests are so managed as to add yearly to their
value and to preserve a model stand of trees. Axmen generally fell the
great trees without thought of the young trees that should at once begin
to fill the places left vacant by the fallen giants. Owners rarely study
their woodlands to be sure that the trees are thick enough, or to find
out whether the saplings are ruinously crowding one another. Disease is
often allowed to slip in unchecked. Old trees stand long after they have
outlived their usefulness.
The farm wood-lot, too, is often neglected. As forests are being swept
away, fuel is of course becoming scarcer and more costly. Every farmer
ought to plant trees enough on his waste land to make sure of a constant
supply of fuel. The land saved for the wood-lot should be selected from
land unfit for cultivation. Steep hillsides, rocky slopes, ravines,
banks of streams--these can, without much expense or labor, be set in
trees and insure a never-ending fuel supply.
[Illustration: FIG. 222. WOOD LOT
Before proper treatment]
The most common enemies of the forest crop are:
First, forest fires. The waste
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