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Collection: Directories and Documents > Pamphlets
Report on the Agriculture Experiment Stations of the University of California (PH 4-16)(1890) (211 pages)
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Page: of 211
116
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA.
hence continually increasing their store of mineral plant food by a
weathering of the minerals present, a process which in so porous @ mae
rial, subject, in its natural condition, to free access of air during the Lhe :
part of the season, was evidently very rapid, and as a consequence fe
developed unusually large amounts of the soluble products, which ©! ae
appear in an inconyenient abundance in the guise of “alkali.” But li a
trouble arises from this cause in the high-lying, sandy tracts, where gee
gation or the natural rainfall carries the soluble salts annually into S e
country drainage; but in the low-lying and less pervious soils of sw@ .
and valley troughs, which are at the same time intrinsically the riches
in available mineral plant food, the accumulation frequently causes considerable trouble and difficulty, There is on the whole, however, but little
of the heavier class of clay or adobe soils to be found in the San Joaquin
Valley; what is currently so designated would in other regions sometimes
be hardly classed as a clay loam. A narrow belt of dark-colored clay oF
adobe land extends from the neighborhood of Merced City toward Stockton, where, northward of French Camp Slough and especially westward to
the Coast Range, really heavy adobe or prairie soils prevail very largely.
To southward of the line of San Joaquin County adobe soils are found only
in the river trough, and the soils of the west side are prevalently sandy, all
the way to the Tejon Mountains.
Soils of the Tulare Valley—The variety of soils occurring in the valley
and their relations to each other can be best illustrated by detailed crosssections from the Coast Range to the foothills of the Sierra.
A section near Bakersfield, across the Kern delta or “island,” does not
present a great variety. The slopes of the Coast Range across Buena
Vista Slough are quite sandy, full of loose fossil shells, and at some points
show the blooming out of alkali salts. The surface is covered with greasewood bushes, and but little grass, more probably because of lack of moisture than want of strength in the soil, judging by the luxuriant growth of
the greasewood.
The soil of the valley of Buena Vista Slough is a fine clayey sediment
of blackish tint, and although not very stiff,is here called “adobe,” by
comparison with the prevailing sandy soils. Its luxuriant vegetation
leaves no doubt of its high productiveness; but the valley is quite narrow,
with a gentle slope up to the level of the plains on the east. Here the
upland soil bordering the valley and for some miles inland is quite light,
rather fine sand almost exclusively overgrown wi
wwing the presence of “black alkali”
is. however. said to produce forty bus
a
th salt or alkali grass,
Wherever water has evaphels of corn per acre withave the following result:
en ae em me nt TSS NOS Ree enens emeeme snes cnccn