| Summary: | 185 soil, rest can 'be introduced, a farmer who expects success ought not to undertake the production of the flax crop on other than practically virgin soil. He must also practice careful seed selection, grading, and treatment, if he wishes to continue succesful production for any extended period. Seed Bed: Great stress is usually placed, by English writers on flax culture, upon the idea of deep working the soil in preparing the seed bed. This may be said to hold good, provided compactness of soil is provided. Thus writers who contend for a loosening and softening of the seed bed seem to be wholly in the wrong. The one thing that the flax crop cannot stand is a friable, loose textured soil. The best flax soils are found to be those with an admixture of very fine sea-sand or silt resting upon a heavy, compact subsoil. Where the better crops of Flanders, Holland. and Northwest Russia are seen growing, the top soil with its fine admixture of sand soon after preparation becomes very compact, save only a slight layer of surface sand, which, working to the top by rain, acts as a mulch or blanket preventing cracking and baking in periods of slight drought. The character of the soil naturally determines the time of working and plowing, but fall plowing is apt to give the best results in all those types of soil which tend to become more compact by working. In all cases in which the soils after deep plowing may become more thoroughly compact by harrowing or top working, much harrowing is desirable. In very rich, loamy, soils which are liable to become loose and friable by persistent working, such for example as.the lands of the Red River Valley, the top working should be confined to the office of destroying weeds and should be stopped at the slightest sign that over-work is tending to looseness, liability to blow, etc. The aim is to provide a well worked under soil with a close texture and continuity for the ascent of water, and at the same time provide such surface working as to give a fine, shallow seed bed. Regardless of traditional theories, observations teach that a quite compact soil underlying a shallow seed bed of not to exceed one-inch debt always gives the best results. The deep plowing and working should precede the seed time just as long as possible, as its value consists in a proper aeration of the underlying soil in preparation of food materials for the coming crop, without sacrificing solidity and continuity. The capillary continuity of the soil from below 21 x 14 cm. Fargo : North Dakota Agricultural College, Government Agricultural Experiment Station for North Dakota, 1906. Bulletin no. 71. p. [139]-215.
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