? 
R FORKING—HOEING. 
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thrown up beside it, to be filled in round the roots of the plant; and 
in the second case, the common garden earth is thrown out of a pit 
a foot or eighteen inches deep, and about the same in diameter, and 
its place supplied by peat, or whatever other kind of earth may be re- 
quired. In removing a young tree or shrub, the ground is generally 
first dug out on one side, so as to form a small trench, and then the — 
spade is driven perpendicularly into the ground, below the depth to 
which the roots descend, and the whole mass is raised like a spade- 
ful of earth. Small plants are raised by the spade at once without 
making any trench; and large trees require all the skill ¢ ssed 
gardener. % 
Forking.—A broad-pronged garden fork may be defined as an imple- 
ment consisting of a number of small sharply pointed spades, unite 
a shoulder or hilt, to which is fixed the handle; and forking differs 
from digging, principally in its being used merely to stir the soil, and 
not to turn it over. In shrubberies, and among perennial herbaceous 
plants, which are not to ‘be taken ‘up and replanted, forking is ve 
useful; as it loosens the hard dry surface of the soil, and admit 
warm air and rain to the roots of the plants. This is very necessa- _ ; 
ry, as the earth is a bad conductor of heat; and where the surface of 
the soil is become so hard as to exclude the air from the roots of the 
plants, the ground in which they grow will be nearly as cold in sum- 
mer as in winter. Besides, when the surface of the ground is hard, 
the rain, instead of soaking gradually into it, runs off, or evaporates, 
without being of any service to the roots. The operation of forking 
consists merely in thrusting the fork a little way into the ground by 
the 2 application of the foot to the hilt, and then pulling back the handle 
as in digging, so as to loosen the earth without raising it. The 
ground may thus be roughly pulverized to a considerable depth, 
without dividing the roots of the plants; which would have been in- 
evitable if the operator had used a spade. 
Hocing —There are several different kinds of hoes which are used 
for getting up weeds, for loosening the soil, for drawing it up round 
the stems of growing plants, and for making a shallow furrow or 
drill fer sowing seeds. The different kinds all belong to two great 
divisions: viz. the draw hoe and the thrust hoe, and may be seen at 
any ironmonger’s shop. , Either kind may be used «for destroying 
weeds; as the weeds may either be loosened and lifted out of the 
soil by the thrugs hoe, or torn out of it by the draw hoe. eo 
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