Waking Up Dead Back Yards and Putting Them to 



Work 



W. R. Beattie 



Horticulturist, U. S. Department of Agriculture 



Of all the troubles that beset the boy or the girl who undertakes 

 to make a garden in the backyard or on a vacant lot that of getting 

 the land in shape is the greatest. If an attempt were made to 

 plant a garden in the middle of a cobble-paved street the task would 

 often be easier than in some backyards where the soil has been 

 trampled and pounded for a half century. Bricks are made by 

 pressing wet clay in a mold then drying and burning it and the only 

 difference between the soil of many backyards and bricks is that 

 the bricks are burned and the soil is not. 



Land that will grow rank weeds is good land and this proves that 

 most of our vacant lots are good land, but they are in poor condi- 

 tion for cultivating. Like the backyard the vacant lot may have 

 been trampled and pounded until there is no longer any life in it 

 and a soil without life is in poor condition. How to put the life 

 into the dead soil is the problem. Some soils are easier to bring 

 back to life than others but the principles involved are the same 

 for all. 



Soils need to be fed just the same as we do only they require a 

 different kind of food, in fact they require two kinds of food, the 

 mineral and the organic or vegetable matter. That old bav?kyard 

 that is as bare and hard as a floor is asleep and before we can feed it 

 we must awake it by digging it up and breaking the clods so that 

 it can take the food that we are going to give it. First the soil must 

 begin to breathe more freely than it did when it was packed so 

 tightly that the air could scarcely get into it. Then if we apply a 

 coating of manure to it there begins to be a growth of myriads of 

 small plants, bacteria we call them, in the soil. These soil plants 

 are so small that they can not be seen but they go right to work to 

 make over the soil so that it will grow crops of beans and peas and 

 radishes and beets and other garden plants for us. 



Sunshine, showers, snow, freezing and thawing, all help to break 

 up the soil particles and get them in shape to make plants grow. 

 How is it done ? First there comes a rain on the lumps of soil in the 

 backyard that were broken up during the autumn with the spade or 

 a pick and a part of the water gradually soaks into those luni])s. 



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