Soils 81 



The soil to avoid is hard clay. It is cold and late. 

 Plants start slowly in it. It cannot be worked when 

 either wet or dry ; and the period in which it can be 

 tilled is so short that much labor 'and equipment are 

 required to enable one to handle it quickly and effi- 

 ciently. .Clay is excellent for some fruits (particularly 

 pears and plums), and for some general farm crops; 

 but it is not the land for vegetable-growing. How- 

 ever, a friable clay loam may be excellent : this loamy 

 condition may be obtained from hard clay soil by judi- 

 cious tillage, the incorporation of humus, the addition 

 of amendments in special cases, and by underdraining. 

 Clay loams are good lands for main-season crops of 

 many kinds, as cabbage, pea, bean. 



Reclaimed swamps usually afford excellent soil for 

 vegetables, if the area can be thoroughly well drained, 

 so that the land -is "early," and if the vegetable 

 matter or peat is well decomposed and comminuted. 

 Soils which are nearly all muck have little body, and 

 suffer from drought ; these soils are mostly the deposit 

 of peat and moss bogs. The fine loams which have 

 accumulated in beds of shallow ponds or lakes are 

 usually ideal vegetable -garden lands, providing the 

 area is not too frosty. 



When the object in vegetable -gardening is to grow very 

 early crops, it is important to have quick- acting land. Such a 

 soil contains a large amount of sand in its composition. * * * 

 When the intention is to raise cabbages, potatoes, turnips, beets, 

 etc., for marketing in the autumn and for crops that require 

 but a short time to mature or that prefer a cool location, a good 

 clayey loam is generally the best. S. B. Green, Vegetable- Gar- 

 dening, Second Ed., 8. 



