BEATTiE] WAKING UP DEAD BACK YARDS 101 



Sometimes vacant lots can be cleaned up and spaded or plowed 

 either in the fall or during the winter. Where a school garden is 

 to be planted, either on the school grounds or on a vacant lot, the 

 land should be broken in plenty of time to allow the weather to 

 mellow the clods. If the garden is spaded by hand and cut in thin 

 slices the clods can be broken up with the edge of the spade as the 

 work goes along. Where the land is plowed shortly before planting 

 time it will be necessary to disk and drag or roll it and even pound 

 with an old axe or back of a heavy hoe until the clods are all broken. 

 If a nimiber of lots are to be plowed it is often possible to get a 

 farmer to bring teams and tools into town on an appointed day and 

 prepare the garden land for a whole community. 



Manure is getting scarcer in cities every year and only enough 

 can now be secured to make a start. Even old weeds cut up fine 

 and worked into the soil will help. After the first season the land 

 should be improved by applying manure if it can be secured also 

 by sowing rye, barley, vetch, clover or something of the kind upon 

 it to improve the soil. This can be done just as the crops are being 

 taken off in the after part of the summer or early autumn and the 

 soil improvement crop can remain on the land all winter. 



Lime 



Most soils are improved by an application of lime at the rate of 

 loo pounds on a backyard 20 by 60 feet in size. This sweetens and 

 loosens the soil and should be put on in the springtime when the soil 

 is being pulverized for planting. Lime should not be used on land 

 that is to be planted to Irish potatoes. Wood ashes, where they 

 can be had, have the same general effect as lime on the soil. Sifted 

 coal ashes may be used to mix with heavy clay soils to loosen them, 

 I to 2 inches of ashes being worked into the soil to a depth of 8 or 

 10 inches. 



Just a word of warning, for while there are very few plots of land 

 that are beyond hope from a gardening standpoint, yet there are 

 those that it would not pay to fool with. These are low lying and 

 marshy places that can not be drained, also the very shallow soils 

 over solid beds of rock that will surely burn out during the summer. 

 Drainage may help the wet soil but the rockbed soil is almost hope- 

 less even where plenty of water is available for watering. There 

 must be sufficient depth of soil for the roots of the plants to live and 

 work in. 



