3 88 GARDENING FOR BEGINNERS 



may be on ground required for spring planting, is to bury 

 them in the soil when trenching. They will in time form 

 valuable manure ; by this method is the ground cleared and 

 prepared for another crop, and enriched for the benefit of 

 future vegetables. To ensure the production of first-class 

 vegetables, the soil must be trenched. A thorough trenching 

 of the soil in the kitchen garden is of the utmost benefit to 

 crops cultivated upon it. It is obvious that if plants are 

 grown in the same soil year after year, this must, although it 

 may be regularly manured, to a certain extent depreciate. 

 The great value of trenching lies in the fact that it brings 

 fresh soil to the surface to be acted upon and improved by 

 the frost, rain, wind, sun, &c., and gives the soil previously 

 on the top a rest. 



Trenching. Neglecting to trench land will result in im- 

 poverishment, for soil that is never exposed to the ameliorating 

 influences of the elements must deteriorate. By trenching, 

 the subsoil is broken up and rendered friable, and therefore 

 is a far more suitable medium for roots to enter than a more 

 or less hard and unbroken mass of material, as it would 

 otherwise be. The work of trenching is best done in the 

 autumn, so that the soil may be left bare throughout the 

 winter. Details of the work will be found on page 378. 



Digging also materially helps to improve the soil ; it is 

 obviously not so good as trenching, for in the latter operation 

 the soil is moved to the depth of quite three feet, and in the 

 former to about fifteen inches. By rough digging in the 

 autumn the soil is turned over and not broken up, but left in 

 large lumps, thus allowing the winter elements to sweeten and 

 render it friable ; in the spring the soil may easily be broken 

 and prepared for either planting or sowing. Trenching is 

 work that needs much time, labour, and expenditure for its 

 proper performance ; it usually happens, therefore, that much 

 of it cannot be undertaken at once. The kitchen gardener 

 should make it a rule to trench a certain portion of nis land 

 every year, and the amount to be thus treated will be best 

 determined by himself. This is the only practical and satis- 

 factory plan of carrying out this most important work. One 

 can easily know by the disposition of the crops which portion 

 can be most conveniently trenched. As the various winter 

 crops are grown first in one part of the garden, then in 

 another, so must the trenching gradually make the tour, and 

 each vacant portion of the ground be treated in turn. The 

 simpler 



The Design of the kitchen garden, the better it will be. 



