208 PRACTICAL STUDY OF GARDENING 



fall as is possible, for the sake of both securing an early 

 garden and reducing the amount of labor in spring. 

 After the land is cleared of refuse from preceding crops, 

 it should be heavily manured, and plowed in the fall. The 

 amount of manure to be applied will depend somewhat 

 upon the fertility of the land, but more largely upon the 

 trueness of the farmer's conception of the plant food 

 requirements of garden crops. The best gardens are 

 possible only where plant food is supplied much more 

 liberally than is considered ample for field crops. 



The most tedious labor in the ordinary garden is the 

 hand weeding of the small vegetables. By proper man- 

 agement of the garden a large amount of this labor can 

 be eliminated. One way to avoid excessive labor in hand 

 weeding is to keep weed seeds out of the garden as much 

 as possible, by avoiding the use of manure containing 

 such seeds, and by destroying all weeds in and about the 

 garden before they go to seed, even if they appear after 

 the crops are harvested. But in spite of all that can be 

 done there will always be weed seeds present in garden 

 soil. The way to prevent these from producing weeds 

 that are larger than the vegetable plants and endangering 

 the life of the latter, is to keep them from starting growth 

 before the vegetables have a chance to start. This is 

 done by working the soil immediately before the vegeta- 

 ble seeds are planted, thus killing any weed seedlings that 

 are about to appear above the surface, and giving the 

 vegetables an even start with the weeds that may develop 

 from seeds germinating later. Still another way of re- 

 ducing the amount of hand weeding is to cultivate very 

 close to the rows with a wheel hoe as soon as the vege- 

 table seedlings appear. 



Some crops demand special training or other manipula- 

 tion to enable them to grow to the best advantage or de- 

 velop the most desirable product. Common Lima beans 

 and tall growing peas require artificial support in the 



