Clay, Sand, Etc. 73 



of all you can do. The decay of this mass of roots, however, furnishes 

 just the food required, and a crop of buckwheat greatly hastens decompo- 

 sition, and adds its own bulk and fertility when plowed under. I think 

 it will scarcely ever pay to plant strawberries directly on the sod of 

 heavy land. 



While buckwheat is a good green crop to plow under, if the cultivator 

 can wait for the more slowly maturing red-top clover, he will find it far 

 better, both to enrich and to lighten up his heavy soil ; for it is justly 

 regarded as the best means of imparting the mellowness and friability in 

 which the roots of strawberries as well as all other plants luxuriate. 



There are, no doubt, soils fit for bricks and piping only, but in most 

 instances, by a judicious use of the means suggested, they can be made to 

 produce heavy and long- continued crops of the largest fruit. 



These same principles apply to the small garden-plot as well as to the 

 acre. Instead of carting off weeds, old pea- vines, etc., dig them under 

 evenly over the entire space, when possible. Enrich with warm, light fer- 

 tilizers, and if a good heavy coat of hot strawy manure is trenched in the 

 heaviest, stickiest clay, in October or November, strawberries or anything 

 else can be planted the following spring. The gardener who thus expends 

 a little thought and far-sighted labor will at last secure results that will 

 surpass his most sanguine hopes, and that, too, from land that would 

 otherwise be as hard as Pharaoh's heart. 



Before passing from this soil to that of an opposite character, let me 

 add a few words of caution. Clay land should never be stirred when 

 either very wet or very dry, or else a lumpy condition results that injures 

 it for years. It should be plowed or dug only when it crumbles. When 

 the soil is sticky, or turns up in great hard lumps, let it alone. The more 

 haste the worst speed. 



Again, the practice of fall plowing, so very beneficial in latitudes 

 where frosts are severe and long continued, is just the reverse in the far 

 South. There our snow is rain, and the upturned furrows are washed 

 down into a smooth, sticky mass by the winter storms. On steep hill- 

 sides, much of the soil would ooze away with every rain, or slide down 

 hill en masse. In the South, therefore, unless a clay soil is to be planted 

 at once, it must not be disturbed in the fall, and it is well if it can be pro- 

 tected by stubble or litter, which shields it from the direct contact of 

 the rain and from the sun's rays. But cow- peas, or any other rank- grow- 

 ing green crop adapted to the locality, is as useful to Southern clay as to 

 Northern, and Southern fields might be enriched rapidly, since their long 

 season permits of plowing under several growths. 

 10 



