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If you grow a summer crop on the summer-fallowed upland, you lose the chief advantage of summer fallowing, which is the storing of moisture for the following year's crop. A cultivated crop would waste less moisture than a broadcast crop, surely, but on uplands without irrigation it would take out all the moisture available and not act in the line of a summer fallow.
In 1873 they had less, yet the crops did well wherever the farmers had summer-fallowed the land. This practice is now very general, and is necessary, in order that the grain may have the advantage of the early rains. When a farmer plows and prepares his land in the spring, lets it lie all summer, and sows his grain in November just as the earliest rain begins, he need not fear for his crop.
I recently bought a ranch at Sheridan, Placer county, and was intending to put 10 acres to peaches and 50 acres to wheat or barley, but the residents tell me that the land must be summer-fallowed before I can do anything. The soil is a red loam and has not been plowed for six years.
We have summer-fallowed land which we know will grow good alfalfa, and as we have just had four inches of rainfall upon it, we were wondering if we could not plow the twenty acres and get a stand upon it in time to stand the cold weather this winter. Do you think this is practicable?
I am told that a portion must be summer-fallowed each year, but I wish to grow some summer crop on this fallow ground that will both enrich the soil and at the same time furnish good milk-producing feed for cows thoroughly cultivating it between the rows. What crop would be best? I am told the common Kaffir or Egyptian corn are both soil enriching and milk producing.
The freeze struck us pretty severely. I had 125 acres of summer-fallowed wheat which I had estimated to make 20 sacks to the acre of grain. It was breast high in places already, and was just heading out. The frost pinched the stalks of this grain in several places and the heads are now turning white. It is ruined for grain. There is lots of fodder in it, and it should be made into hay.
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