ii6 CULTURE OF VEGETABLES [CH. 



patience the most hopeless lawn may be cleared of this 

 weed, but it will well repay the trouble spent on it. 



A top dressing of soot or rotted manure applied in the 

 early spring will strengthen the grasses, and will often 

 hinder the objectionable tendency to grow moss. 



CHAPTER XII 

 CULTURE OF VEGETABLES* 



" SURE it will do well enough," is, unfortunately, the motto 

 of too many owners of gardens which might easily be made 

 productive and profitable. If it referred to the alluvial 

 prairie-land of Manitoba such a theory might possibly pass 

 unchallenged, for it is said the ground in those regions 

 needs only to be scratched, not tilled ; but even there the 

 primeval earth will not produce more than half what may 

 be raised on an average well-tilled farm at home. 



Succession of Crops. The old rule still holds, " In the 

 sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread." One of the root 

 evils of our small farming is the vicious practice of growing 

 a plot of potatoes in the same field for years together, 

 until the land will produce almost nothing No amount 

 of manuring will fit such ground for the same plants until 

 a system of rotation of cropping has been followed. Not 

 merely do the new crops draw new qualities (the chemical 

 plant food they must live on) from the soil, but, as in the 



* For Scotch gardens, the dates in this Chapter are perhaps several 

 weeks too early. 



