142 DEPTH OF SOIL. 



failure of a crop, and that crops will fail by either 

 extreme of penury or pampering. 



The most essential requisite to a good garden 

 soil is sufficiency of depth. Eighteen inches may 

 do, but no labour or expence will be so well repaid 

 as that which is employed in obtaining a depth of 

 two feet. This may not be practicable at the first 

 trenching, but let this be your aim, and your plans 

 may easily be directed to its ultimate attainment. 

 Suppose at the first, you have only one foot of good 

 soil, and a wretched clay, or till, or mere gravel, 

 beneath ; in that case put down all the good soil, 

 and bring up only six inches of the bad. This, 

 being wrought, in the course of future digging, 

 into combination with an equal part of the buried 

 stratum, will be greatly improved. After a few 

 years bring up, by a second trenching, other six 

 inches of the subsoil, which, in its turn, will be in- 

 corporated with the remaining half of the surface 

 earth at first deposited, and you will then have a 

 soil of one character throughout all its depth of 

 two feet, and adequate to all the purposes of good 

 gardening. 



Many resources may be had for helping the 

 under stratum when first exposed. Besides the 

 necessary and common expedients of dung and 

 lime, a great deal of earth may be gathered with- 

 out causing damage by its removal as in the for- 

 mation of gravel walks, in which case a very con- 

 siderable depth of loose stones may be substituted 

 for excellent soil, or in the clearing of ditches, or 



