44 The Garden. 



v.— peepaeation of the soil. 



1. Braining. — If your soil require draining, this is tlie first 

 thing to be attended to. If in digging a hole two feet deep, 

 water be found to collect and stand in it, even during the wettest 

 times, you may be sure that draining is required. "No one," 

 J. J. Thomas says, " who has never given draining a full and 

 fair trial can appreciate its importance. Yery often the soil 

 may be worked and planted from two to four weeks earlier in 

 the spring — a most important advantage for early vegetables. 

 Scarcely less is the benefit during the rest of the season in pre- 

 venting hard-baked soil in times of drouth." Do not neglect 

 this on account of the expense. No operation in gardening 

 "pays" better. A quarter of an acre weU underdrained will 

 be more valuable than an acre of wet, cold, tenacious, undrained 

 soil. Dig parallel ditches from twenty-five to thirty feet apart, 

 and from three to four feet deep, forming a slightly inclined 

 plane on the bottom, which may be from six inches to a foot 

 wide. These ditches may be filled to a suSicient depth with 

 rubble-stones or brush, and then covered with soU, if the arched 

 tiles or tubes of burned clay, now mostly used, can not be pro- 

 cured, The average expense of the best underdraining is esti- 

 mated at only from twelve to eighteen dollars an acre. 



2. Trenching. — We have already (in Chapter II.) spoken of 

 the necessity of depth of soil for horticultural purposes, and 

 especially for the growth of trees, and of the means for deep- 

 ening soils naturally too shallow, as nearly all are. Trenching 

 is thus performed : 



" At one end of the plot to bo trenched, dig with the spade 

 a trench three feet wide and at least two feet deep, throwing 

 the earth out on the side opposite to the plot. Now open an- 

 other trench of the same width, and put the surface spadeful 

 of tliis into the bottom of the former trench, and the next 

 spadeful upon that, until it is opened to the depth of the first 

 one. "When the plot is entirely trenched in this way, the last 

 trench will remain open, and must bo fiUed with the earth 



