16G MY FARM. 



For a good garden, as I have said, a deep rich 

 soil is essential ; and to this end trenching is desir- 

 able; but trenching will not always secure it, for 

 the palpable reason that subsoil is not soil. I have 

 met with certain, awkward confirmatory experiences, 

 where a delicate garden mould of some ten inches 

 in depth, which would have made fair show of the 

 lesser vegetables, has been, by the frenzy of trench- 

 ing, buried under fourteen inches of villainous 

 gravelly hard-pan, brought up from below, in which 

 all seeds sickened, and all plants turned pale. What- 

 ever be the depth of tillage, it is essential that the 

 surface show a fine tilth of friable, light, unctuous 

 mould ; the young plants need it to gain strength for 

 a foray below. And yet I have seen inordinate sums 



4 



expended, for the sake of burying a few inches of 

 such choice moulds, under a foot-thick coverlid of 

 the dreariest and rawest yellow gravel that ever 

 held its cheerless face to the sun. 



The amateur farmer, however, is not staggered by 

 any such difficulties ; indeed, he courts them, and de- 

 lights in making conquest. They make good seed-bed 

 for his theories far better than for his carrots. Let 

 me do no discredit, however, to ' trenching,' which 

 in the right place, and rightly performed, by thor- 

 ough admixture, is most effective and judicious ; nor 

 should any thoroughly good garden be established 



