Translations:Benutzer:Arian/Klett-Mini-Test/442/en

The available arable land is divided in such a way that the various cereals, root crops, and fodder plants — in market gardening, the various vegetable species — which stand side by side on individual plots in any given year, are grown in succession on one and the same plot across the sequence of years. The art lies in arranging the individual field crops — according to whether they build humus or deplete it, whether they root shallowly or deeply, whether they are demanding of manure or less exacting — so that diseases are avoided, vigour of growth and fructification (nutritive value) are encouraged, and soil fertility is on the whole maintained or, better still, increased. Of great significance here is that seed stock be kept within the farm operation itself — that is, sourced from one's own seed-saving or plant-breeding work. The culture of arable farming works above all with the forces of the cosmos, which act on plant growth indirectly from below upward, through the earth — silica and lime, mediated through clay. This finds its particular expression in cereal cultivation, where, in comparison to wild grass, the whole plant — in stem, leaf, and seed — is pervaded by the process of fructification.