64 PB ACTIO AL GUIDE TO GABDEN PLANTS 



the owner of the garden can perform the digging himself it would be 

 an excellent substitute for exercises such as rowing, cricket, lawn-tennis 

 &c. 



Best time for digging. — Ground may be dug whenever it is not in a 

 wet sticky condition, and when free from frost and snow. During the 

 autumn and winter months, however, the work is seriously taken in 

 hand after the crops have been cleared from the ground. The fresh 

 upturned soil is then exposed until spring to the action of the weather, 

 and owing to the rest given and the chemical changes that have taken 

 place, it will be in a much improved condition either for sowing seeds 

 or planting out fresh crops. 



How to dig. — The novice usually regards digging as a simple opera- 

 tion until he has tried his hand at it for half an hour or so. In that 

 short period he not only secures a serious backache and can hardly 

 stand upright, but he has also got into difficulties in disposing of the 

 soil which he has been trying to dig up. Instead of having a clean 

 open furrow always in front of him into which to turn the next ' spit,' 

 he finds he has nowhere to place it except back in the spot from which 

 he has lifted it. 



To give some idea as to how the work is to be done, let the reader 

 imagine this page to represent a piece of ground which is to be dug. 

 If it is only a small area the first furrow — represented by the top line 

 of type — may be taken out from the top and transferred to the bottom 

 outside where the last furrow or line of type stands. Furrow (or line 

 of type) number two may then be dug a spade deep and turned into the 

 space left open by the first one taken out. And so on, digging each 

 row from left to right or vice versa, and pushing it forward into the 

 vacant furrow, until the last one is reached. The furrow here may 

 then be filled with the soil taken from the first opening, and thus the 

 whole surface will not only have been turned over, but vriU stand on a 

 different bottom from what it did before. 



Should the piece of ground be too large to dig across it at once, it 

 may be divided into two or more convenient portions. Let the reader 

 imagine it divided into two portions like some pages of this book. The 

 soil from the first furrow— represented in the columns by the top line 

 of type — may then be placed over at the top right-hand side or column. 

 Then the various rows (as represented by the lines of type) may be dug 

 one after the other as before until the end is reached. The workman 

 then turns right about face to begin plot number two — as it were from 

 the bottom of the page. The soil from the furrow (represented by the 

 bottom line of type in the right-hand column) is transferred to the 

 furrow at the bottom of the first plot on the left and thus completes it. 



