COST OF EQUIPMENT 



to be undertaken. Further accessory equipment 

 may be obtained by having homemade trellises, 

 root cages, racks for soil testing, flats, homemade 

 barometer, rain gauge, sand boxes for planting 

 (or for the entertainment of the tiny child visitors 

 whom the older "little mothers" sometimes have 

 to bring), rubbish boxes, bed markers, butterfly 

 nets, and numerous other sub- 

 stitutes that save expense. 



With small children, in their 

 first year work, or on plots not 

 over 8 X 10 feet, the weeders 

 (also the hoe and rake) can be 

 supplanted in part, or wholly, 

 by the cultivating stick. In the 

 remote districts of Italy, a plow 

 is still frequently only a tough 

 forked limb of a tree pushed or cultivating Stick 

 pulled through the ground. A 

 cultivating stick is merely a piece of soft wood, or 

 lath, one-fourth of an inch thick, one and a half 

 inches wide, and 1 2 inches long, shaped to the hand 

 and pointed at one end, which may be hardened 

 by charring it. Held in the hand like a dagger and 

 thrust into the dry, hard earth until the fingers 

 strike the soil, it cuts each stroke to a uniform 

 depth of between two and three inches and leaves 

 in its wake a fine mulch.* In untrained hands, 

 it is less likely than hoe or weeder to cut or damage 



♦ For this useful substitute, I am indebted to Mr. Henry G. 

 Parsons. 



