PREPABATION OP THE SOIL. 9 



stones. Old sods are a good filling for the lower 

 part of a bed : care should be taken, however, not to 

 use any containing couch grass, as the roots of this 

 grass find the surface from a great depth, and are 

 eradicated with great difficulty. 



Any good clean sand, if free from stones and salt, 

 is suitable : common building sand will answer every 

 purpose. 



Our mode of filling a bed is as follows : Three 

 heaps of peat, loam, and sand, respectively, are made 

 near the bed ; two men, with long-handled shovels, 

 fill from them, one throwing from the pile of peat, 

 the other from the pile of loam, and in every eight 

 or ten shovelfuls sprinkling in one of sand. The 

 compost is thrown up against one side of the bed. 

 which is raised to its full height, and the bed is thus 

 gradually filled. Thus we have often planted one 

 end of a bed before the other was filled. 



This mode insures a thorough mixing of the com- 

 ponent parts, and in beds thus made we have found 

 the plants succeed much better than where the com 

 post was mixed previously to filling. 



Two of our largest beds are on a very steep hill 

 facing the north-west, and their construction differs 

 somewhat from the mode we have given. 



The bed was first marked out on the surface as a 

 large oval about midway down the hill, the object 

 being to look down upon the plants when in bloom, 

 which is always desirable if possible. The excava- 

 tion was begun by digging out the soil to the depth 

 of four feet along the upper side of the bed, and 

 piling it along the lower side. This course was pur- 



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