CHAPTER IV. 

 VEGETABLE SOILS OF CALIFORNIA. 



Soils which favor the most satisfactory growth of vegetables 

 are those which are most easily maintained in a condition of tilth 

 to promote seed germination and rapid establishment of the seedling 

 in sure-growing contact with the soil-substance; soils which facili- 

 tate deep-root penetration 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 moisture within 

 reach of the roots and such amount of natural fertility 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 vegetable processes; porosity to facilitate the escape of 

 surplus water and the entrance of the air with its constituents which 

 promote root action and modification of the soil substance and ab- 

 sorptive 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 often profitably make considerable ex- 

 penditure for soil improvement. Market gardeners need no exhor- 

 tation in this line, but the home gardener should be urged not to 

 despair 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 its amelioration he can pro- 

 ceed rationally and accomplish marvels with Will, Work and Water 

 upon almost any soil, from a brick yard to a desert. City people 

 have grown their table supplies on housetops ; no ruralist can find a 

 less productive subsoil. 



Light Rather Than Heavy Soils. The characters already cited 

 point clearly to what is commonly designated as a rather light soil 

 as best for vegetable growing. The extreme variations in soils are 

 popularly known as heavy adobe and light sandy soils. Neither are 

 usually counted suitable for garden purposes without treatment to 

 overcome their defects and yet as the terms are used in some Cali- 

 fornia regions, there are very good gardens on both of them. The 

 explanation is that in such localities one has less sand and one less 

 clay than the other. Both are really loams or mixtures of sand and 

 clay; one a clayey loam, the other a loamy sand. Aside from this 

 misapprehension of terms we have, of course, clays (locally called 

 "adobe") which are true enough to the type to bring despair to the 

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