202 Gardening 
root is touched. Fleshy roots like beets and carrots, 
especially, may be injured in this way. 
Tools for cultivating. In cultivating the small garden, 
short-handled weeders with claw-like teeth, midget and 
longer-handled prong cultivators, hoes, and garden 
rakes may be used. For the larger garden a wheel hoe 
with various cultivator attachments is an excellent tool. 
In still larger gardens horse-drawn or tractor cultivators 
may be used. 
All these tools should be used so as to stir and break 
up the surface of the soil. A depth of 1 inch is usually 
enough to cultivate; certainly one should seldom go 
as deep as 2inches. Such shallow tillage does little injury 
to the roots of growing crops. It is important always to 
cultivate at about the same level, for the feeding roots 
of most crops reach near the surface and deep tillage 
(to a depth of 3 inches or more) after shallow tillage may 
destroy many roots and thereby check the growth of the 
plants. 
The best tool for surface tillage is a garden rake. 
No other hand tool can do the work as effectively unless 
the soil becomes much compacted; then the hoe or the 
Norcross weeder is better. When the crops are growing 
in rows that are too close together to permit the use of 
an ordinary garden rake, a small steel rake, 4 or 6 inches 
wide, with numerous short teeth, is most useful. If it is 
fitted with a long handle, the work can be done rapidly 
and without much stooping. Shallow surface cultivation 
is of course very necessary in periods of dry weather, 
in order most fully to check the loss of water from the 
soil. 
