Page:Farmers of forty centuries.djvu/440

422 244, in two of which shocks of wheat were still standing in the fields among the growing crops, badly weathered and the grain sprouting as the result of the rainy season. Peanuts, sweet potatoes and millet were the main dry land crops then on the ground, with paddy rice in the flooded basins. Windsor beans, rape, wheat and barley had been harvested. One family with whom we talked were threshing their wheat. The crop had been a good one and was yielding between 38.5 and 41.3 bushels per acre, worth at the time $35 to $40. On the same land this farmer secures a yield of 352 to 361 bushels of potatoes, which at the market price at that time would give a gross earning of $64 to $66 per acre. Reference has been made to the extensive use of straw in the cultural methods of the Japanese. This is notably the case in their truck garden work, and two phases of this are shown in Fig. 245. In the lower section of the illustration the garden has been ridged and furrowed for transplanting, the sets have been laid and the roots covered with a little soil; then, in the middle section, showing the next step in the method, a layer of straw has been pressed firmly above the roots, and in the final step this would be covered with earth. Adopting this method the straw is so placed that (1) it acts as an effective mulch without in any way interfering with the capillary rise of water to the roots of the sets; (2) it gives deep, thorough aeration of the soil, at the same time allowing rains to penetrate quickly, drawing the air after it; (3) the ash ingredients carried in the straw are leached directly to the roots where they are needed; (4) and finally the straw and soil constitute a compost where the rapid decay liberates plant food gradually and in the place where it will be most readily available. The upper section of the illustration shows rows of eggplants very heavily mulched with coarse straw, the quantity being sufficient to act as a most effective mulch, to largely prevent the development of weeds and to serve during the rainy season as a very material fertilizer.