12 Home Vegetable Gardening 



out on the garden table, or rather in it, where grow- 

 ing things can at once make use of it; or what we 

 term, in one word, '"available" plant food. Practi- 

 cally no soils in long-inhabited communities remain 

 naturally rich enough to produce big crops. They 

 are made rich, or kept rich, in two ways; first, by 

 cultivation, which helps to change the raw plant 

 food stored in the soil into available forms ; and sec- 

 ond, by manuring or adding plant food to the soil 

 from outside sources. 



"Sandy" in the sense here used, means a soil con- 

 taining enough particles of sand so that water will 

 pass through it without leaving it pasty and sticky 

 a few days after a rain; "light" enough, as it is 

 called, so that a handful, under ordinary conditions, 

 will crumble and fall apart readily after being pressed 

 in the hand. It is not necessary that the soil be 

 sandy in appearance, but it should be friable. 



"Loam: a rich, friable soil," says Webster. That 

 hardly covers it, but it does describe it. It is soil in 

 which the sand and clay are in proper proportions, 

 so that neither greatly predominate, and usually dark 

 in color, from cultivation and enrichment. Such a 

 soil, even to the untrained eye, just naturally looks 

 as if it would grow things. It is remarkable how 

 quickly the whole physical appearance of a piece of 

 well cultivated ground will change. An instance 

 came under my notice last fall in one of my fields, 



