104 CALIFORNIA VEGETABLES. 



fused through quite a bulk of material. The effect of 

 large use of these sifted coal ashes on an adobe garden 

 has well-nigh taken the hatefulness out of it and made it 

 into a loam delightful to put tools into. 



Manure as a Mulch. Market gardeners operating with 

 heavy soils use immense quantities of barn-yard manure 

 both composted with garden wastes and as fresh manure. 

 The latter is largely used as a mulch or top dressing during 

 the rainy season to prevent heavy rain from compacting 

 the soil around the young plants and to get the richness 

 of the manure by leaching. They use it in summer also 

 to prevent surface evaporation and to prevent compacting 

 the surface when the water is hand-thrown with scoop or 

 pan from 'the ditches between the raised beds. This is 

 to help small plants with their rooting; afterwards they 

 take water by percolation from the ditch. The free sur- 

 face use of fresh coarse manure, to be afterwards forked 

 in, is safe on heavy clay, which the gardener is endeavor- 

 ing to lighten up, but if coarse manure is used as a mulch 

 on light sandy soil, it should be raked up and taken to 

 the compost heap, as only thoroughly decomposed manure 

 should be worked into such soil. 



Wood Ashes. Coal ashes have no estimable manurial 

 value; their effect is mechanical just as is the effect of 

 adding sand to clay, but wood ashes as well as plant ashes 

 of all kinds, is intrinsically an excellent fertilizer, since 

 it contains the soil ingredients required by all plants, even 

 though in different proportions. The value of ash varies 

 materially in accordance with the degree of heat to which 

 it has been subjected when made. In general, the hotter 

 the fire, the less active will be the ash as a fertilizer. 



The chemical composition of ashes varies considerably, 

 according to the plants, or parts of plants, from which it 

 has been derived; the smaller the wood, or the more of 

 weeds or other herbaceous material there was in it, the 

 more valuable the ash; but taking a broad average, a 

 bushel (say forty-eight pounds) of wood ashes would, ac- 



