AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 507 



The first two or three weeks through tilth ensures a good crop. 

 Carrots, for instance, if not attended to in early periods of growth, 

 are a faihire often. 



Wlieu a farmer cannot spare his team from ordinary plowing, 

 to run a subsoil plow, he may partially advantage by it in the 

 marking out for field crops (often exjdained here). Run the lift- 

 ing subsoil plow where the rows of corn or potatoes are to come, 

 and you thus give them a drainage and pulverise the earth be- 

 neath them, which is very impoi-tant. When roots have a fair 

 chance to grow, they run to incredible depths. Mechi states that 

 on the brink of a clay pile his parsnip roots attained a length of 

 fourteen feet six inches; but I would not be understood that it is 

 absolutely necessary to jdIow fourteen feet six inches deep, nor 

 to grow root crop this long, for they would somewhat resemble 

 the Chinese j^otato. 



TRENCHING. 



Mr. Judd stated that many of the most valuable operations in 

 gardening and ftirming, though often referred to in agricultural 

 lectures and periodicals, were not well understood. He had often 

 been asked in regard to trenching, for example, and he found 

 comparatively few persons who understood the medics operandi. 

 As the subject was specially interesting at this season, he would, 

 by the aid of a simple diagram or two upon the blackboard, de- 

 scribe and illustrate the process, repeating essentially what he 

 had recently published on the subject in the April ^Agriculturist. 



The word trenching is often used indefinitely to signify any 

 method of stirring the soil deeply, either with the spade or plow. 

 Trenching, as used by gardeners, implies digging the ground 

 deeper than a single length of the spade, and is termed " true" or 

 " bastard" trenching, according to the method in which it is per- 

 formed. True trenching consists in inverting the soil, placing 

 the surface below the sub-soil. The following figure will illus- 

 trate the process : 



Fig. 1. 

 a, b, c, and d severally represent the ends of long trenches ex- 

 tending across the garden. 



