13° The Canadian Horticulturist. 



But I think the greatest drawback to successful gardening (and it was to 

 draw attention to this that this paper was written) is, that the continued growing 

 of vegetable and flower plants in the same ground, and the incessant hoeing and 

 cultivating has a tendency to make the soil dead and compact ; and not in the 

 best condition for the development of plant-life. I was very much struck with 

 this a few years ago. I came into possession of a piece of old pasture-land 

 which was supposed to be very poor ; it was given a heavy coat of manure and 

 planted to early vegetables, but to be certain of results I planted on the same day a 

 few of all the seeds on a piece of land that had been heavily manured every year 

 for fifteen years ; there was a marked difference in the crops, that on the pas- 

 ture land was two weeks earlier, and by far the finer vegetables. Wood ashes 

 are a great help to such land ; and here I might be permitted to remark that it 

 is a disgrace to the cultivators of the soil of this section of country, that wood- 

 ashes are exported out of this town at from 3 to 4^ cents a bushel, and sent to 

 the United States, where our American friends (who are generally supposed to 

 know what they are about), pay from 25 to 35 cents a bushel for them. Last 

 spring I was up through my native township of West Zorra, and saw an ashman 

 get one and a-half bushels of fine wood ashes (an ashman's bushel usually contains 

 five pecks), and in return give a paltry piece of inferior soap that even a gardener 

 would scarcely like to use to clean his hands. Some agricultural papers, recom- 

 mend an export duty on ashes. I am strongly of opinion that where cultivators 

 of the soil will not use wood ashes at 3 or 4 cents a bushel, the only kind of 

 legislation they require is an act to compel them to go in when it rains. I might 

 also remark that a good coat of wood ashes is almost a preventive of potato 

 scab. But, though ashes are a help, they are only a help. Cats eat mice, in 

 some countries men eat men, and there is nothing that vegetation seems to 

 delight to feed on so much as on the decaying roots of their fellows ; and so to 

 obtain the best results we must occasionally fill the soil with the roots of some 

 plants for this purpose. Clover is the best, the roast beef as it were of vegetable 

 life, but clover roots are expensive. It takes two years to get the soil well filled 

 with them ; and where land is worth two or three hundred dollars an acre it 

 does not pay to grow clover. It has devolved upon the Pres. of the Ontario Bee- 

 keepers' Assocn., Mr. O. B. Hall, of our town, a close observer and careful culti- 

 vator, to let us out of the difficulty, and it is simply a question of rye — not " old 

 rye," but the rye plant. As soon as the crop is gathered, be it vegetables or 

 flowers, the ground is sown to rye — the rye makes a vigorous growth, and by 

 spring the soil is a mass of roots ; it can be dug or ploughed under, and you 

 have a seed-bed, in the best possible condition, for almost any kind of seeds or 

 plants. 



Angus Rose. 



Woodstock, Ont. 



