82 CALIFORNIA VEGETABLES 



with paved streets and well-watered soil, sifted coal ashes act well 

 in the hen-house and on the manure pile, and the cinders which are 

 sifted out are a good foundation for permanent garden walks. The 

 free use of the fine coal ashes for years kept the writer's fowls 

 without a case of swell-head, rid the hen-house of all odor, and 

 furnished many wagon loads of home-made fertilizer which is per- 

 fectly safe to use freely as the hen manure is diffused through quite 

 a bulk of material. The effect of large use of these sifted coal ashes 

 on an adobe garden well-nigh took 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 sum- 

 mer 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; afterward they take water percolation from 

 the ditch. The free surface use of fresh coarse manure to be after- 

 ward forked in, is safe on heavy clay, which the gardener is en- 

 deavoring 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. 



Of the services of a manure mulch, Prof. Rogers, of the Uni- 

 versity Farm, says: 



Well-rotted stable manure, free from coarse straw, should be put on 

 to a depth of about two inches and scattered evenly over the beds. When 

 planting onion, radish, turnip, beet or other seeds, scatter the manure on 

 the beds immediately after planting. Where the vegetables have appeared 

 above the surface the top dressing can be distributed between the rows. 

 After the garden has thus been treated it will not need irrigating under 

 ordinary conditions more than once a week, and except where the weed 

 growth is bad hoeing will be a thing of the past. The manure not only 

 has a physical effect, but it will enrich the soil and instead of the tops of 

 the vegetables having a yellow, sickly color, they will become green and 

 healthy in appearance. Water can be applied in the same manner as if 

 the top dressing was not there. 



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 in- 

 trinsically an excellent fertilizer, since it contains the soil ingredi- 

 ents 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. 



