7 DECEMBER 1951, Page 24

“ Trash-Farming "

In the United States, where bitter experience of "mining" out fertility has 'taught a belated frisdom, it is in the best farming areas that our mould-board plough has become antiquated. Instead, trash-farming or, as we call it, sheet-composting, leaves the straw and farmyard litter to lie on the fields, chops. up the straw and weeds with the disc-plough, and by roughly incorporating them into the top inches of the soil (no harrowing nor rolling) creates a quick covering humus, Hard pan is effectively prevented by subsoiling and/or planting deep-rooted grasses and alfalfa whose root-systems comb the subsoil for minerals. By stub means fertility is restored.