The First Book of Farming | Page 6

and watch their progress for a few weeks (see Fig. 5). The
plants in the garden soil will grow larger than those in the sand. The
roots evidently must get food from the soil and those in the good
garden soil get more than those in the poorer sand. Another important
function of plant roots then is to take food from the soil for the plant.
You know how thick and fleshy the roots of radishes, beets and turnips
are. Well, go into the garden and see if you can find a spring radish or
an early turnip that has sent up a flower stalk, blossomed and produced
seeds. If you are successful, cut the root in two and notice that instead
of being hard and fleshy like the young radish or turnip, it has become
hollow, or soft and spongy (see Fig. 6). Evidently the hard, fleshy
young root was packed with food, which it afterwards gave up to
produce flower stalk and seeds.
A fourth use of the root, then, is to store food for the future use of the
plant.
=Experiment.=--Plant a sweet potato or place it with the lower end in a
tumbler of water and set it in a warm room. Observe it from day to day
as it puts out new shoots bearing leaves and roots (see Fig. 7). Break
these off and plant them in soil and you have a number of new plants. If
you can get the material, repeat this experiment with roots of
horse-radish, raspberry, blackberry or dahlia. From this we see that it is
the work of some roots to produce new plants. This function of roots is
made use of in propagating or obtaining new plants of the sweet potato,
horse-radish, blackberry, raspberry, dahlia and other plants.
[Illustration: FIG. 4. To show that plant-roots take water from the soil,
the plants in A are suffering from thirst. B has sufficient water.]
[Illustration: FIG. 5. To show that plant roots take food from the soil.

Both boxes were planted at the same time.]
[Illustration: FIG. 6. A radish root, from which the stored food has been
used to help produce a crop of seeds. Notice the spindle shaded
seed-vessels.]
[Illustration: FIG. 7. A sweet-potato root producing new plants.]
We have now learned five important things that roots do for plants,
namely:
Roots hold plants firmly in place.
They absorb water from the soil for the plants.
They absorb food from the soil for the plants.
Some roots store food for the future use of the plant.
Some roots produce new plants.
How do the roots do this work? To answer this question it will be
necessary to study the habit of growth of the roots of our plants.
HABIT OF GROWTH OF ROOTS
The proper place to begin this study is in the field or garden. So we will
make another excursion, and this time we will take with us a pick-axe
or mattock, a shovel or two, a sharp stick, a quart or half-gallon pitcher,
and several buckets of water. Arrived in the field, we will select a
well-developed plant, say, of corn, potato or cotton. Then we will dig a
hole about six feet long, three feet wide, and five or six feet deep, close
to the plant, letting one side come about four or five inches from the
base of the plant. It will be well to have this hole run across the row
rather than lengthwise with it. Then with the pitcher pour water about
the base of the plant and wash the soil away from the roots. Gently
loosening the soil with the sharpened stick will hasten this work. In this
way carefully expose the roots along the side of the hole, tracing them
as far as possible laterally and as deep as possible, taking care to loosen

them as little as possible from their natural position. (See Figs. 8 and 9.)
Having exposed the roots of one kind of plant to a width and depth of
five or six feet, expose the roots of six or eight plants of different kinds
to a depth of about eighteen inches. As this may require more time than
we can take for it in one day, it will be well to cover the exposed roots
with some old burlaps or other material until we have them all ready, in
order to keep them from drying and from injury.
When all is ready we will study the root system of each plant and
answer these four questions:
In what part of the soil are most of the roots?
How deep do they penetrate the soil?
How near do they come to the surface of the soil?
How far do they reach out sidewise or laterally from the plant?
To