CHAPTER III 
SOILS, MANURES AND FERTILIZERS 
HE soil must furnish the whole foundation 
of plant life. For centuries those who 
have grown things have realized the vital 
importance of having the soil rich or well supplied 
with plant food; and if this is important in grow- 
ing plants in the field or flower garden, where each 
vegetable or flower has from one to several cubic 
feet of earth in which to grow, how imperative it 
is to have rich soil in a pot or plant box where each 
plant may have but a few cubic inches! 
But the trouble is not so much in knowing that 
plants should be given rich soil, as to know how to 
furnish it. I well remember my first attempt at 
making soil rich and thinking how I would surprise 
my grandmother, who worked about her plants in 
pots every day of her life, and still did not have 
them as big as they grew in the flower garden. I 
had seen the hired man put fertilizer on the garden. 
That was the secret! So I got a wooden box about 
two-thirds full of mellow garden earth, and filled 
most of the remaining space with fertilizer, well 
mixed into the soil, as I had seen him fix it. I re- 
member that my anxiety was not that I get too 
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