BOOK OF THE HOME GARDEN 



this fork into the ground, press it with your foot, 

 and take up a clod of earth. As you raise the fork 

 with the clod on it, turn it over; that turns the clod 

 upside down. Then hit the clod several hard whacks 

 with your fork and it crumbles to pieces. Keep do- 

 ing this all over your garden and if the earth is 

 still very lumpy, leave it a day or so and fork it 

 again. You could do this with a spade, but I am 

 sure you will use the fork wherever you can be- 

 cause you will find it does better work. 



After our garden is forked, it is full of hills and 

 valleys, and we wish it smooth and even, so we take 

 the rake, which is really a great big comb, and 

 scratch the earth backwards and forwards, back- 

 wards and forwards, until it becomes smooth and 

 the surface fine, for the rake also helps break the 

 lumps. 



The hoe is very useful in pulling dirt from one 

 place to another and is also very useful in taking 

 out weeds from around our plants. The hoe is 

 called a cultivating tool. Cultivating means to stir 

 the top of the ground. It seems kind of queer that 

 we should disturb the earth around our plant by 

 scratching it up, but there is one of the laws of na- 

 ture which makes it necessary for us to do this if 

 we want good gardens. 



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