Trees Over High-Water.

Which are the best fruit trees to plant on black adobe soil with water table between 3 and 4 feet from surface?  The soil is very rich and productive.  The land is leveled for alfalfa also; will the alfalfa disturb the growth of trees?

We would not plant such land to fruit at all, except a family orchard.  The fruits most likely to succeed are pears and pecans.  On such land alfalfa should not hurt trees unless it is allowed to actually strangle them.  The alfalfa may help the trees by pumping out some of the surplus water.

Soil Suitable for Fruits.

I am sending samples of soil in which there are apricots and prunes growing, and ask you to examine it with reference to its suitability for other fruits.  Will lemons thrive in this soil?

It is not necessary to have analysis of the soil.  If you find by experience that apricot and prune trees are doing well, it is a demonstration of its suitability for the orange, so far as soil is concerned.  The same would also be a demonstration for soil suitability for the lemon because the lemon is always grown on orange root.  The thing to be determined is whether the temperature conditions suit the lemon and whether you have an irrigation supply available, because citrus fruits, being evergreen, require about fifty per cent more moisture than deciduous fruits, and they are not grown successfully anywhere in this State without irrigation, except, possibly, on land with underflow.  The matter to determine then is the surety of suitable temperatures and water supply.

For Blowing Soils.

I am going to dry-sow rye late this fall.  I want some leguminous plant to seed with the rye for a wind-break crop, not to plow under.  The land varies from heavy loam to blow-sand.  I have under consideration sweet clover, burr clover, vetches.  I see occasional stray plants of sweet clover (the white-blossomed) growing in the alfalfa on both hard and sandy soil.  I read in an Eastern bee journal that sweet clover can be sowed on hard uncultivated land with success.  Could I grow it on the hard vacant spots that occur in the alfalfa fields?

You can sow these leguminous plants all along during the earlier part of the rainy season (September to December) except that they will not make a good start in cold ground which does not seem to bother rye much.  But on sand you are not likely to get cold, waterlogged soil, so you can put in there whenever you like — the earlier the better, however, if you have moisture enough in the soil to sustain the growth as well as start it.  We should sow rye and common vetch.  Sweet clover will grow anywhere, from a river sandbar to an uncovered upland hardpan, but it will not do much if your vacant spots are caused by alkali.

More Than Dynamite Needed.

I have some peculiar land.  People here call it cement.  It does not take irrigation water readily, and water will pass over it for a long time and not wet down more than an inch or so.  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?