ents of Lawes and
Gilbert afford a strong argument against the use of summer-fallows. I do
not think so. A summer-fallow, in this country, is usually a piece of
land which has been seeded down one, two, and sometimes three years,
with red clover. The land is plowed in May or June, and occasionally in
July, and is afterwards sown to winter wheat in September. The treatment
of the summer-fallow varies in different localities and on different
farms.

Sometimes the land is only plowed once. The clover, or sod, is plowed
under deep and well, and the after-treatment consists in keeping the
surface soil free from weeds, by the frequent use of the harrow, roller,
cultivator or gang-plow. In other cases, especially on heavy clay land,
the first plowing is done early in the spring, and when the sod is
sufficiently rotted, the land is cross-plowed, and afterwards made fine
and mellow by the use of the roller, harrow, and cultivator. Just before
sowing the wheat, many good, old-fashioned farmers, plow the land again.
But in this section, a summer-fallow, plowed two or three times during
the summer, is becoming more and more rare every year.

Those farmers who summer-fallow at all, as a rule, plow their land but
once, and content themselves with mere surface cultivation afterwards.
It is undoubtedly true, also, that summer fallows of all kinds are by
no means as common as formerly. This fact may be considered an argument
against the use of summer-fallowing; but it is not conclusive in my
mind. Patient waiting is not a characteristic of the age. We are
inclined to take risks. We prefer to sow our land to oats, or barley,
and run the chance of getting a good wheat crop after it, rather than to
spend several months in cleaning and mellowing the land, simply to grow
one crop of wheat.

It has always seemed to me entirely unnecessary to urge farmers not to
summer-fallow. We all naturally prefer to see the land occupied by a
good paying crop, rather than to spend time, money, and labor, in
preparing it to produce a crop twelve or fifteen months afterwards. Yet
some of the agricultural editors and many of the agricultural writers,
seem to take delight in deriding the old-fashioned summer-fallow. The
fact that Lawes and Gilbert in England find that, when land contains
considerable nitric acid, the water which percolates through the soil
to the underdrains beneath, contains more nitrate of lime when the land
is not occupied by a crop, tha