166 MY FARM. 



For a good garden, as I have said, a deep rich 

 soil is essential ; and to this end trenching is desir 

 able ; but trenching will not always secure it, for 

 the palpable reason that subsoil is not soil. I have 

 met with certain, awkward confirmatory experiences, 

 where a delicate garden mould of some ten inches 

 in depth, which would have made fair show of the 

 lesser vegetables, has been, by the frenzy of trench 

 ing, buried under fourteen inches of villainous 

 gravelly hard-pan, brought up from below, in which 

 all seeds sickened, and all plants turned pale. What 

 ever be the depth of tillage, it is essential that the 

 surface show a fine tilth of friable, light, unctuous 

 mould ; the young plants need it to gain strength for 

 a foray below. And yet I have seen inordinate sums 

 expended, for the sake of burying a few inches of 

 such choice moulds, under a foot-thick coverlid oi 

 the dreariest and rawest yellow gravel that ever 

 held its cheerless face to the sun. 



The amateur farmer, however, is not staggered by 

 any such difficulties ; indeed, he courts them, and de 

 lights in making conquest. They make good seed-bod 

 for his theories far better than for his carrots. Let 

 me do no discredit, however, to trenching, which 

 in the right place, and rightly performed, by thor 

 ough admixture, is most effective and judicious ; nor 

 should any thoroughly good garden be established 



