Tor July, 1921 



651 



A Garden of Peace, by F. Frankfort Moore ; George H. Derail 



Company, New York. 



"Intimate daily relation with the earth and the things that grow 

 in it has always seemed the most fruitful soil of philosophy and 

 -contentment. Superficially this book may appear to be largely 

 about a certain garden. It has much to do with that garden, but 

 •one discovers very soon that the paths all lead out beyond the 

 .garden confines in delightful excursions of talk — talk literary, talk 

 artistic, talk dramatic. Shrewd, whimsical, with every little while 

 a judgment of men or things that is sound and renetrating. A 

 ■volume of mellow experience, of sane cheerfulness. 



"For the Nature-lover the author's achievement in making a 

 beauty spot of an old garden whose walls were part of an ancient 

 castk, will be a genuine delight. Every bit of garden wisdom 

 gleaned from the masters of Europe has been drawn U|)on and 

 jut to use. The illustrations have a charm all their own." 



These words are copied from the publishers' announcement 

 because the present writer could not write a better or a truer de- 

 .scription of it. It is a stimulating, as well as entertaining, med- 

 ley, from which, if space permitted, could be selected for quota- 

 tion many "gems of thought." Here is one : 



"After all, where is the joy of gardening apart from the trying? 

 It was a great philosopher who affirmed, at the close of a long 

 ]ife. that if he were starting his career anew and the choice were 

 ■ofTered him between the Truth and the Pursuit of the Truth, he 

 would certainly choose the latter. Tliat man had the true garden - 

 sing spirit." 



THE SOUTHERN GARDENER 

 By Henry W. Ravenel (Charleston, S. C, 1871) 



The Library of the U. S. Department of Agriculture has lately 

 ■come into possession of a little-known work: The Soutltcrn Gar- 

 dener by Henry W. Ravenel (Oiarleston, S. C, 1871). This 

 booklet of 64 pages undoubtedly answered a definite local need at 

 She time of publication. Oddly enough, while all the American 

 horticultural books of the 18th century originated below Mason 

 and Dixon's line, the South produced comparatively few during 

 the 19th. White's Gardening for the South (Athens, Ga., 1856) 

 was probably not very accessible in the South of the seventies, 

 although there had been a new edition by the Judd Co. of New 

 York in 1868 ; in any case Dr. Ravenel's book offered in concise 

 ■form and at a modest price all the necessary instructions for th; 

 culture of the vegetable and fruit garden. 



The work is specially tntitled to notice, moreover, because of 

 its rarity ; it was not in the Library of Congress, nor is it listed 

 in the Catalogue of the Library of the Massachusetts Hoi ticui- 

 lural Society or in L. H. Bailey's bibligraphy in the Standard 

 Cyelofedia of Horticulture. It is also interesting because of its 

 author, Henry William Ravenel (1814-1887), who is best known 

 as one of the pioneer ;Tiycologists of the South. — indeed, of the 

 whole United States, — and collector and distributor of two price- 

 less sets of fungi. He wrote a number of articles on fungi and on 

 the flora of South Carolina, but his direct services to agriculture 

 are less well known. For some time he was agricultural editor of 

 the Weekly Xews and Courier of Charleston, he contributed 

 largely to the Rural Carolinian, and for many years previous to 

 his death was botanist to the South Carolina State Board of Ag- 

 riculture. He gave addresses on agricultural and horticultural 

 topics before various local societies, which with other contribu- 

 tions on similar topics printed in the newspapers, are nowadays 

 hard to find, but an Address delivered before the Aiken fruit- 

 growing association, which was separately printed (Columbia, 

 S. C, 1839) is in the Library of the U. S. Department of Agri- 

 culture. His Southern Gardener was published without date, but 

 a notice of the work appeared in the Rural Carolinian (v. 2, p. 

 646) August, 1871. 



A LESSON ON SOIL IMPROVEMENT 



(Continued from {'age 647) 



ordinary hydrated lime while being less active is more or less 

 effective upon all soils, although for those of a light sandy 

 nature ground limestone is mucli to lie preferred as the latter 

 does not waste the organic matter of the soil by oxidizing it ; 

 also upon light soils ground limestone has a consolidating effect, 

 acting like clay. Sulphate of lime, or g>'psum should be used 

 much more than it is. This form is especially active in liberating 

 potash and pliosphoric acid as well as other plant-foods, and it 

 is the most desirable form of lime to apply to lawns, and. con- 

 trary to other forms of lime, it may be used in conjunction with 

 stable, or other similar organic manures ; in fact it is an excellent 

 plan to mi.x it regularly with stable manure as it is removed from 

 the stable inasmuch as it fixes and absorbs ammonia, thereby pre- 

 venting it from being wasted. Gypsum is not, however, so active 

 in correcting soil acidity, and when the line of soil improvement 

 indicated is the reduction of acidity, one of the other forms should 

 I>e used. 



The uses of lime, cither directly or indirectly, in soil improve- 



ment are manifold, and the benefits to be derived from its appli- 

 cation great. It is no exaggeration to say that the productivity 

 of mo>t gardens and farms would be greatly increased if sufficient 

 attention were paid to liming; all crops would be greatly im- 

 proved both in quality and quantity at a cost quite out of propor- 

 tion to the value of the results obtained. 



Deposits of earth known as marl are occasionally found. Marl 

 is a mixture of disintegrated limestone and clay, and contains 

 calcium carbonate in variable amounts. Sandy and peaty soils in 

 the vicinity of such deposits can be greatly improved, both phy- 

 sically and chemically, by its application. 



As before stated, soil is a mixture of inorganic and organic 

 matter, the former being disintegrated rock and the latter mainly 

 vegetable matter in various stages of decay. The term "humus" 

 has been given to decayed vegetable matter in the soil and ex- 

 amples of soils having an extreme quantity of humus are seen in 

 those of a muck and peaty nature. Humus contains a large 

 number of organic compounds, many of which have had as yet 

 but little study, but it is extremely varied in its composition. 

 There is a great difference in soils as to their humus-producing 

 power. Soils deficient in lime or alkaline compounds possess 

 only a feeble power to produce humates. There is, too, a marked 

 variation in the composition of the humus from different kinds, 

 of organic matter. Straw, sawdust and materials rich in cellu- 

 lose and other carbohydrates yield a humus characteristically rich 

 in carbon and poor in nitrogen. Materials rich in nitrogen, like 

 animal matter, leguminous plants, and stable manure, produce 

 a more valuable humus, rich in nitrogen and possessing the power 

 to combine with the potash and phosphoric acid of the soil to 

 form humates. 



Formerly no value was assigned to humus as plant-food, but 

 later investigations have proved that crops obtain a large part 

 of their mineral food from the organic combinations contained in 

 humus. The fact that plants feed on humate compounds, and that 

 decaying animal and vegetable matter produce humates from 

 inert potash and phosphoric acid of the soil, have an important 

 bearing upon crop production in iwinting out a way by whicii 

 unavailable plant-food may be converted into more active and 

 available forms, thereby saving the expense of purchasing fertil- 

 izers. This also explains one of the values of stable manure in- 

 asmuch as it makes the inert plant food of the soil more avail- 

 able. 



Therefore a really rich soil must always contain plenty of 

 humus, and any system of cropping which materially reduces the 

 humus content causes a deterioration in its fertility. With the 

 exception of peaty and muck soils, practically all are capable 

 of being improved by increasing the amount of humus they con- 

 tain. 



Loss of humus from soils is caused by oxidation, and anything 

 which accelerates oxidation reduces the humus content. In many 

 of the western prairie soils which have been continually under 

 grain cultivation for thirty or forty years the amount of humus 

 has been reduced fifty per cent, and when land is continually 

 under cultivation and no organic manures or vegetable matter 

 added to the soil the humus is rapidly oxidized. 



The physical properties of a soil may be entirely changed by the 

 addition or loss of humus. Soils with little humus have small 

 power of storing up water and resisting drought. The mechani- 

 cal condition of heavy clay is vastly improved by the addition of 

 humus-forming material, and humus benefits light soils by binding 

 to.gether the soil particles. 



The least expensive method of increasing the humus in soils is 

 by turning under green crops, and if these crops are some kind 

 of leguminous plant, such as crimson clover, cow peas, or some- 

 thing of a similar nature, nitrogen is added as well ; stable manure 

 is also beneficial in this direction in addition to the actual plant 

 food it contains. .'\s we proceed in the direction of increasin.g 

 soil iiiimus, wc have to guard against the effects of the natural 

 increase in soil acidity, and, as above mentioned, the use of lime 

 will then be indicated. 



Tlie decay of animal or vegetable matter in the soil always pro- 

 duces more or less humic acid, which acid is harmful to plant 

 life when it continues long in a free state. Such acid is, how- 

 ever, liencficial to the production of available plant food inasmuch 

 as it is capable of acting upon the inorganic matter in the soil 

 and thereby liecomes changed from a free to a 'fixed state, the 

 latter stage taking the form of humates. The addition of lime 

 not only assists in the decomposition of crude vegetable matter, 

 but also at the same time affords a base for the humic acid to 

 unite with. 



The direct fundamentals in connection with soil improvement 

 arc, drainage, liming, and the increase in its humus content. 

 These three act together in indirectly increasing the numbers of 

 the beneficial bacteria inliabiting the soil, without which a soil, 

 however chemically rich, is to all intents sterile. At the same time 

 all the potentialities of any fundamental process of soil irnprovc- 

 inent may be nullified unless thorough and deep cultivation are 

 continually kept up. 



