ROLLING, PLANKING, AND HOEING 183 



answers every purpose when used with timeliness 

 and thoroughness. 



MISCELLANEOUS HAND TOOLS 



There is an almost endless variety of hand tillage 

 tools designed to be used when the rows are too 

 close together to admit of horse tillage or for work- 

 ing close to the plants. These are of far greater 

 relative importance in gardening, especially in 

 market gardening, than in general farming, be- 

 cause gardening is usually conducted under more 

 intensive culture than general farming. Wheel 

 hoes, hand cultivators, scuffle hoes, hand weeders 

 and the like are indispensable in commercial or 

 home gardens, but rarely needful on farms where 

 staple crops are grown, because these must be 

 grown with as little hand-labour as possible in order 

 to make them pay. Moreover, the hand tools can 

 be used to best advantage only on soil that is 

 exceedingly mellow and free from stones a con- 

 dition that many farms cannot meet. In short, 

 they are tools for intensive culture; hence they are 

 of greater value to the gardener, who is forced to 

 locate very near his market on valuable land, and 

 who must adopt intensive culture in order to make 

 the business pay, than for the farmer who grows 

 staple crops, and who can locate further from the 

 market on cheaper land where such intensive 

 methods are not needed. 



It is noticeable that even in gardening operations 

 the tendency is more and more to dispense with 

 hand tools. Crops that were formerly planted in 

 rows twelve or fifteen inches apart, so that tillage 

 had to be done by hand, are now frequently planted 

 in rows twenty-eight or thirty inches apart so that 



