Macdonald (1909) emphasized that maintaining a deep enough soil mulch is more than enough to prevent the capillary water from rising up to the surface and getting evaporated. So, for arid zone farming, he recommends first storing as much rain water as possible in the soil by tilling deep before the rain. Rainstorm would compact the tilled soil. When planting the seeds you compress the soil around them so that capillary forces bring deeper soil moisture up to the seeds. According to him, then the trick is to deweed and keep a decently thick top soil layer loose, so that capillary forces do not bring the moisture to the surface but only up to the root level. Now hardly anybody talks about this technique.
Macdonald, William 1909 “Dry farming: its principles and practice”, The century Co., NY.
Please also have a look at this useful ResearchGate link.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/320356486_Effect_of_Mulching_on_Soil_Moisture_Conservation
I dont think what you are saying is true. Mulching is a well known agricultural practice and it has been modified and developed during the years. You are posting a century old statement and in present context, it is fairly out of fashion as better versions of mulching are developed.
Thanks Arvind for your documents. I understand the value of extraneous mulch materials and use them to prevent raindrop erosion, wherever they are available cheap. Yet, in arid and semi arid zones, where we grow crops after the rains, is such an external mulch a necessity? I see a lot of sense in what Macdonald says for dry (rainfed) farming. If we can get by with earth-mulch, as he says, it saves a lot of labor and costs, because in such areas, weed growth on dried loose soil surfaces is much less, and the cost of procuring and spreading other types of mulch is pretty high. My question is why ‘soil mulch’ is not recommended for arid areas at the least? Abhijeet, common sense, like Benz/ BMW cars, grows in value with time.
Soil mulches are also used in arid and semi-arid zones to increase the crop yield. Please follow the below given link and PDF attachments.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1300/J064v20n02_05
https://www.nature.com/articles/srep10725
Article Soil and Water Conservation in Arid and Semi-arid Areas: The...
Chapter Soil System Management Under Arid and Semi-Arid Conditions
Article Soil mulching significantly enhances yields and water and ni...
I found time to read a gardener’s viewpoint on growing in arid lands (Solomon, 1993), where he adds more recent practical experiences to the discussion on soil mulching and problems with other types of mulching. I also find sense in his reasoning for growing plants with more ‘elbow room’ in rainfed dry land agriculture. Would like to hear comments from researchers.
Solomon, Steve 1993 Gardening Without Irrigation: or without much, anyway, sasquatch books/ valde books 2009 edition, Oregon.
I take the liberty to add a digital version of Solomon (1993) since it is no longer available freely in the net.