PLOUGHING AND PREPARING THE LAND. 13 



" mildew." As far as I observed, those crops raised on fer- 

 tilizers alone appeared to .be more injured than those raised 

 on barn-manure. For the future, I shall use part barn- 

 manure and part fertilizers on each of my acres of onions. 



PLOUGHING AND PREPARING THE LAND. 

 nPHE FARMER who brings up the sub-soil on his onion-bed, 

 ■^ will find he has made a mistake. Onions do not 

 require deep ploughing : four or five inches is sufficient 

 depth to insure a good crop. One of the finest pieces I 

 ever saw was managed by carting on the manure in the fall, 

 and simply giving it a thorough working into the soil with an 

 ordinary one-horse cultivator in the spring, after which the 

 land was raked and planted, no plough or any implement 

 other than the cultivator having been used. In this instance 

 the soil was naturally quite light. I have found the wheel- 

 harrow very useful for this end. In the West, the ground 

 having been ploughed in the fall, it frequently receives only 

 a cultivating or harrowing in the spring. 



As the great object is to get the land in a thoroughly fine 

 condition, to facilitate the covering of the seed with fine earth, 

 and to leave the land in good working condition for after- 

 culture, no labor should be spared to attain this end. On 

 most soils the ground should be ploughed, cross-ploughed, 

 and thoroughly cultivated. If, from the backwardness of the 

 spring and the consequent wet state of the land, the soil 

 should still be lumpy, it should be thoroughly rolled before 

 raking for planting, and it may be well to brush-harrow it. In 

 raking my own beds, I use the Meeker Harrow (see illustra- 

 tion), which, by going over the ground once each way (the 

 last going-over should be at right angles with the way the 

 seed-rows are to run) , leaves the bed in as fine a condition 



