CHAPTER IV. 

 VEGETABLE SOILS OF CALIFORNIA. 



Soils which favor the most satisfactory growth of vege- 

 tables are those which are most easily maintained in a con- 

 dition of tilth to promote seed germination and rapid es- 

 tablishment of the seedling in sure-growing contact with 

 the soil-substance; soils which facilitate deep-root pene- 

 tration by the advancing plant so that moisture and plant 

 food shall be rapidly reached, and which have sufficient 

 retentive power and capillarity to maintain adequate mois- 

 ture within reach of the roots and such amount of plant 

 food that the plant may attain the greatest growth in the 

 least time. Soils with these characters have also the 

 most valuable incidental qualities of warmth, to foster 

 vegetative processes; porosity to facilitate the escape of 

 surplus water and the entrance of the air with its con- 

 stituents which promote root action and modification of 

 the soil substance and absorptive power to readily receive 

 and deeply distribute rainfall or irrigation. These are 

 high requirements, for it is an ideal soil which possesses 

 them all. 



Ideal Soils Not Essential. Fortunately gardening art is 

 amply able to supply natural deficiencies in nearly all 

 respects and, if he is working for high-priced products on 

 a comparatively small area, the vegetable grower can of- 

 ten profitably make considerable expenditure for soil im- 

 provement. Market gardeners need no exhortation in this 

 line, but the home gardener should be urged not to de- 

 spair because of any refractory character in the soil he 

 is obliged to utilize. If he study the subject by the aid 

 of most excellent treatises recently written on the soil and 



