SOIL FERTILITY 



cultivation of the ground, remember that, at the 

 rate of making two inches every ten years of the 

 finest and most fertile top-soil, earthworms or 

 angle worms are trying to help, and do not despise 

 them.* Encourage them in the garden and do not 

 neglect the lesson that these little ploughmen 

 teach. They digest earth and vegetable food 

 through their strong, muscular bodies, and 

 literally grind out a new, rich soil. The large 

 stretches of velvety turf that one drives over in 

 approaching Stonehenge in the south of England, 

 as well as the partially buried stones, testify to 

 their industry through long centuries. 



Exhausted soils teach the old lesson, that you 

 cannot have your cake and eat it, too. Plants 

 cannot take large supplies out of the soil without 

 exhausting it. Therefore if the school garden is to 

 devour plant supplies, intensive farming, or the 

 constant supply of fertilizers each season and often 

 during the season must be practiced, as is done 

 in truck farming where many successive crops 

 are repeatedly raised upon the same area. 



in order to preserve soil moisture, dry farming 

 is followed. By it all moisture within about ten 

 feet of the surface of the ground may be called 



♦ Earthworms in flower pots and window boxes arc undesirable 

 because their burrows allow water to run through the pot or box too 

 rapidly. Watering the plant with lime water — a handful or 5 inch 

 lump of quicklime to a 2 quart pitcher of water — will destroy them. 

 An interesting experiment is to have a quantity of earth where the 

 work of the worms can be watched; they can be fed with fresh grass, 

 onion stalks, or even raw meat. See Darwin on Earthworms. 

 8 97 



