i68 AROUND THE YEAR IN THE GARDEN 



Holding the Soil Moisture in Summer 



The summer inattention of the gardener is often due to 

 ignorance as well as to shif tlessness. I have had old farmers 

 remonstrate with me that I would injure my onions and 

 other rowed crops by going through them so much with a 

 wheel hoe, and thus drying up the surface. But in these 

 days, anyone entitled to the name of gardener knows or 

 has little excuse for not knowing that it is only by keeping 

 the surface dry and finely pulverized that the moisture 

 below the surface can be conserved. A simple illustration 

 will serve to prove the physical principle involved in this 

 fact. Take a strip of blotting paper, dip one end in water 

 and see how the moisture soaks up through it to the top. 

 Next take a similar piece, cut it in two, press the ends 

 firmly together, and dip the lower part in water. The 

 water refuses to cross the line, infinitesimal as the separa- 

 tion is, because the " capillary tubes" through which it rises, 

 have been severed. In the same way, frequent cultivation 

 of the surface of the soil, severs the capillary tubes through 

 which moisture rises from the lower levels of the soil to the 

 surface, and is there evaporated at an astonishingly rapid 

 rate by wind and sun. Simple as this rule is, refusal to take 

 advantage of it every year costs hundreds of gardeners a 

 good many dollars each, both in actual income and possible 

 saving, for it is as true of the garden patch as of broad 

 acres of potatoes or corn. 



One of the most important things to attend to, then, in 

 summer work in the garden, is frequent shallow cultivation. 

 It need not, and for most crops should not, be over two 

 inches deep. The most efficient and rapid tool to use for 

 this work in the garden, is the double-wheel hoe, until crops 

 get too large to be straddled. After that it can be changed 

 to a single-wheel hoe, and the leaf guards put on. It is 

 advisable to use alternately the flat hoes and the cultivator 

 teeth (the improved forms of the latter cut deeper in the 

 middle of the row than they do near the plants). This 

 prevents the formation of a hard crust just below the dirt 



