Turning Salt Flats into Wheat Fields

Alex McAllister, of Yakima City, was called upon by a representative of this paper last week. Mr. McAllister is one of the most prominent sheepmen in Yakima County and has stayed with the industry through good times and bad. He has a good farm and a well-built, nicely furnished residence. He showed a twenty-acre field of wheat from which he expects to get forty bushels per acre. This land, up to last year, was abandoned because of the alkali and was growing nothing but salt grass and grease brush. He plowed it up, and this spring, when the high water came, flooded the ground thoroughly. The result was that the alkali was washed away. 'There is one feature of this experiment I want to call your attention to,' said Mr. McAllister. 'You will notice that wherever there is a slight raise in the land the wheat is of a rich green color and growing still, while the lower places are not doing so well and are ripening a little prematurely. I would not have known how to account for this if I had not read the very interesting address delivered by Prof. Fulmer at Ellensburg and published in Ranch and Range, in which he explained that when land was flooded it would not only carry away the alkali, but would also carry away in solution the humus, a very essential element in plant growth. Now, where the high spots are, the land was not flooded so long as the low places, and the water did not take so much of this element off. Such information as is given out by Prof. Fulmer is of the greatest benefit and enables us to plan much more intelligently the proper conduct of our farms. I am now in a position to remedy this condition in my soil and thus make the land produce much more profitably.'