GARDENING. 



861 



healthy families, as a rule, are the largest consumers of fruit and vegetables. The sub-acid 

 or acid of fruits regulates the bile and the digestive apparatus generally, preventing fevers, 

 indigestion, and other ills of the system. The cultivation of a good garden, with a large 

 variety of vegetables and fruits that are adapted to the climate, also, has an important bearing 

 upon the success of field husbandry, since it awakens an interest in agriculture generally, 

 cultivates habits of observation, stimulates enquiry, leads to study and reading, expands the 

 mind, and makes farming more a business of the mind than of muscle; hence it has a ten 

 dency to elevate the farmer and his occupation, making farming more of a successful business 

 enterprise, and less of an unskillful and unremunerative drudgery. 



Garden Implements. In the proper management of the garden, there are many 

 aids in the form of implements which may be regarded as indispensable to thorough and 

 efficient cultivation These comprise the spade, fork, shovel, rake, hoe, trowel, garden 

 line and reel, watering pot, and wheelbarrow, while a hotbed or cold 

 frame for starting the plants for early planting is of great 

 value in securing an early crop of vegetables; in fact, indis 

 pensable in a cold climate. Many of the wheel hoes, 

 cultivators, and weeders now in use are very ser 

 viceable by facilitating and lessening the labor 

 of gardening, as well as performing the 

 work in a more thorough and satisfac 

 tory manner than could be done by 

 hand. In the use of such 

 implements, the width of the 

 spaces between the rows and 

 drills must not only vary 

 according to the nature of the 

 crops cultivated, but to suit 

 the width of the weeder and 

 cultivator in some one of its 



adjustable forms. The accompanying cuts represent the different combinations of the well- 

 known and valuable garden implement invented by Mr. &quot;Wm. G. Comstock, for many years 

 an extensive seed grower, and manufactured by the Comstock Brothers, of East Hartford, 

 Conn. This machine received the highest Centennial award, and combines 

 the following implements in one, by adjustment of different 

 attachments: A wheel seed sower, wheel cultivator, wheel 

 rake, wheel scuffle hoe, wheel shovel plow, wheel 

 strawberry-runner cutter, and wheel verge, or 

 turf cutter. The strawberry cutter is a 

 sharp steel wheel and knife to be 

 fixed to the cultivator and 

 weeder for removing 

 strawberry runners, cut 

 ting the runners and cul 

 tivating between the rows 

 at the same time. The 

 Seed Sower is an attach 

 ment that may be com 

 bined with the cultivator and weeder, and can be attached in five minutes. It sows beet, 

 parsnip, and other seeds difficult to sow, or that can be sown with any seed sower, with the 



Cultivator with Strawberry Cutter. Seed Sower. 



COMSTOCK S SEED SOWER AND CULTIVATOB COMBINED. 



AS A WEEDER. 



AS A CULTIVATOR. 



