36 CALIFORNIA GARDEN FLOWERS. 



drought injury and limits the plant food available to the plant by 

 confining its root activity to a shallow surface layer of soil. 



Third. For the same reason also the aeration of the soil is reduced 

 and this renders it less hospitable to the plant, for adequate aeration 

 is as necessary as adequate moisture. 



Fourth. Tillage is corrective of irrigation effects upon the soil 

 and is for the same general reasons essential to conservation of 

 moisture and economy in the use of water, because evaporation is 

 greater from an impacted surface which is more likely to be produced 

 by irrigation than by rainfall. 



Fifth. The most impressive demonstration that these points are 

 well taken is found in two conditions clearly discerned from experi- 

 ence: first, that the products of irrigated land on which tillage is 

 constantly associated with the use of water are superior and more 

 abundant than when tillage is scant or absent; second, that tillage 

 must be stopped before the end of the summer in regions of hard 

 autumn freezing for fear that some plants may grow too late and 

 come into freezing temperatures with too much soft wood in the new 

 growth. The efficiency of tillage is thus demonstrated both positively 

 and negatively. 



For these and other incidental reasons, tillage is at least equally 

 required with irrigation as in dependence upon rainfall, and is re- 

 quisite, on the whole, in larger amount because the methods of ir- 

 rigation, in general practice, make it more necessary to overcome 

 the effects of frequent applications both to maintain the soil in what 

 is properly described as "a lively condition" and for the conservation 

 of moisture for the good of the plant. 



Why Most Important in the Garden? Although the foregoing 

 conditions rule in all our agriculture they are most important of all 

 in ornamental gardening. With nuany plants of which the seed or the 

 fruit is the thing desired, there may be danger of encouraging growth 

 toward size to the lessening of weight or quality of the product, but 

 who ever found a flower too large or a foliage plant too magnificent? 

 Occasionally a naturist may cry "monstrosity" at the professional or 

 home gardener for "pampering his plants" but the cry evokes no 

 popular response. The joyful amateur will fasten in his button hole 

 a rose as large as the crown of his hat and go forth to the admiration 

 of his fellow men. He can get such a rose by plenty of manure, plenty 

 of water and plenty of tillage and not otherwise because these 

 things make the plant most active and efficient. And the rose knows 

 what is good also for other flowering plants. Even a cactus with a 

 record of producing cow-feed at the rate of ninety tons to the acre 

 has ordinary plant-sense, for it did this on land which had been tilled 



