92 



House & Garden's 



Small seeda like carrots 



need a shallow drill, 



made with a pointed 



stick 



BUILDING the GARDEN 



Making Sure of Results by Laying a 

 • Firm Foiindatio?i — ^ General 

 Summary of Important Details 



AL'i'HUL'GH the beginner at gardening 

 , may not realize it, the making of a 

 garaen is not unlike the building of a house: 

 good materials are essential, but the ultimate 

 results hinge upon making the foundation 

 right. Good seeds and a good plan for the 

 arrangement of the different crops are, of 

 course, important; but alone they do not by 

 any means assure satisfactory results. Years 

 of practical e.xperience, or else the closest 

 attention to every detail of preparation and 

 planting, are necessary to give the garden a 

 strong start toward real success. 



The preliminary work — what to do to the 

 soil to make it capable of producing big crops 

 — is the first essential. The next problem is 

 how to set aljout getting these big crops out 

 of the soil. With this part of the foundation 

 of our garden building laid, what comes next? 



To make the whole matter as plain as pos- 

 sible for the uninitiated, let us take up the 

 matter of soil preparation and planting not 

 in a general way, but in detail, item by item 

 in proper order. 



Let us assume, therefore, that the garden 

 has JDeen plowed and harrowed and thoroughly 

 enriched with manure or fertilizer, or with 

 both. Possibly there has been a long, beating 

 rain which has made the surface compact and 

 iiard again; or a few days of wind and sun 

 that have left it crusted and baked on the 

 surface. 



The very first step is to prepare, for receiv- 

 ing the seed, as much of the garden as we 

 e.xpect to plant at the first sowing. 



This is quite a different operation from 

 merely having the garden plowed and har- 

 rowed or spaded up — as different as putting 

 on the ceiling boards or laths and plaster is 

 from putting up the rough studding that is 

 to support them. Perhaps our planting in- 

 structions say to '"rake the soil off nice and 

 smooth with a garden rake"; but if the soil 

 has lain for some days in a beating rain or 

 in bright sunshine after plowing and harrow- 

 ing, ordinary raking will have very little effect 

 upon it. 



Get out the wheel-hoe and put on the plain, 

 vertical cultivator teeth — all of them, and 

 evenly spaced. With this you can make a 

 cut 1' to 13/2' wide. Mark off roughly the 

 part of the garden you are ready to plant and 

 go over it with the wheel-hoe, a strip at a time, 

 until the entire surface is loosened up. It will 

 be pretty stiff work, but not nearly as hard 

 as trj'ing to do it with a rake, and you will 

 accomplish several times more. If your gar- 

 den is so small that you have not a wheel-hoe, 

 then you should get one of the adjustable cul- 

 tivator-tooth rakes or hoes which are now on 

 the market. These, of course, have no wheels, 

 and are pulled instead of Iseing pushed like a 

 wheel-hoe. But they will do good work, al- 

 though not quite as fast or as easily as a 

 wheel-hoe. You should have one or the other. 



Whatever the tool used, the object is to get 

 the surface thoroughly loosened up again to a 

 depth of several inches. If no other tool is 

 available, you may have to do it with an ordi- 

 nan' hoe or with the spading fork. 



When this work has been done, we are ready 

 to use the rake. .And the next thing for the 

 beginner to leam is that this implement is 



