happen that most of the plant food of one or more kinds may be nearly exhausted as far as that kind of plant is concerned that has grown there continually, while there would be plenty of easily available food for plants with a different kind of root system and different root acids, etc.  This is one reason why rotation of crops is so good; it gives a combination of root acids and root systems to the soil during a term of years, and it also frees the soil from one certain kind of organism because it cannot survive the absence of the particular plants on which it thrives.

Summer-Fallow Before Fruit Planting.

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.

Your local advisers are probably right as to the necessity for summer-fallowing in order to conserve moisture from a previous year’s rainfall and to get the land otherwise into good condition.  There might be such a generous rainfall that an excellent crop might come without summer-fallowing, and the results will depend upon the rainfall.  If it should be small in amount, you might not recover your seed.  By the same sign you might not get much growth on your fruit trees, but you could help them by constant cultivation and by using the water-wagon if the season should be very dry.  Therefore, you are likely to do better with trees than with grain without summer-fallowing, although even for trees it is a decided advantage to have more moisture stored in the subsoil and the surface soil pulverized by more tillage.

Defects in Soil Moisture.

I have apricot trees that appear to be almost dead; all but a very few small green leaves are gone, and they look bad, still I think they might be saved if I only knew what to do.

Presumably your apricot tree is suffering from too much standing water during the dormant season, or from a lack of water during the dry season.  The remedy would be to correct moisture conditions, either by underdrainage for winter excess or by irrigation for summer deficiency.  When a tree gets into a position such as you describe, it should be cut back freely and irrigation supplied, if the soil is dry, in the house that the roots may be able to restore themselves and promote a new growth in the top.

Dry Plowing for Soil and Weed Growth.

Is there any scientific reason to support the belief that it is injurious to the soil to dry-plow it for seeding to grain this fall and winter?  Will dry-plowing now cause a worse growth of filth after the rains than the customary fallowing in the spring?  Should the stubble be burned, or plowed under!