United States or Haiti ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


When really wet it can be dipped up with a spoon. Hardpan is down about 24 to 36 inches. I have tried blowing up between the vines with dynamite, and see little difference. Can you suggest anything to loosen up the soil?

Such treatment would render your soil mellow, and, in connection with blasting of the hardpan to prevent accumulation of surplus water over it, would accomplish the transformation which you desire. The cost and profit of such a course you can figure out for yourself. Is Dynamite Needed? I have an old prune orchard on river bottom lands; soil about 15 or 16 feet deep.

The main canal cut through the tableland for two miles, with a top width of even fifty feet and a depth of twelve feet, chopped out in places, with stone axes, through a difficult formation of hardpan, "caliche." The old canal was cleaned out for the necessities of the pioneers, at a cost of about $48,000, including the head, and afterward was enlarged.

If you are on river flats with an alluvial soil, rather loose to a considerable depth, dynamiting is not necessary. If, by digging, you encounter hardpan, or clay, dynamiting may be very profitable.

I have planted rhubarb roots in the San Joaquin valley and find the root crowns rot below the surface. The old-fashioned summer rhubarb usually goes off that way in very hot localities. If there is too much alkali or hardpan, or if planted too late, the same results will be had with any sort of rhubarb.

On most of the estate the soil is thin, varying in color from a light gray to a yellow red, with below a red clay hardpan almost impervious to water. To an observer brought up on a farm of the rich Middle West, Mount Vernon, except for a few scattered fields, seems extremely poor land. For farming purposes most of it would be high at thirty dollars an acre.

It is almost impossible with such a leachy foundation to keep the surface soil properly moistened and enriched; You are apt to lose both water and fertilizer into the too rapid drainage. Soils and Oranges. I find this entire district underlaid with hardpan at various depths, from 1 to 6 feet down, and of various thicknesses.

You could not reasonably expect dynamite to transform the character of the surface soil except as its rebelliousness might in some cases be wholly due to lack of drainage in that case blasting the hardpan might work wonders. But you have another problem, viz: to change the physical condition of the surface soil to prevent the particles from running together and cementing.

A new menace hovered over every coyote that ranged near the foot of the Hardpan Spur, a menace that filled the hardiest prairie wolf with dread. Many a lone coyote was suddenly startled by a huge shape that leaped for him and bore him down.

February and March are usually the best months, according to the season in the interior valleys. Alfalfa and Soil Depth. Do you consider soil which is from 4 to 6 feet deep to hardpan of sufficient depth for alfalfa?