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GARDENING FOR THE SOUTH. 



small. As the plants grow larger, the hoe may be used 

 more fearlessly, and thinning should also take place, from 

 time to time, as the danger diminishes of their being de- 

 stroyed by insects. It is not enough to keep the weeds 

 down ; digging deeply among the plants admits the atmos- 

 phere, with it fertilizing gases, and actually manures the 

 young plants. Many persons do not like to use the hoe 

 in dry weather, for fear the plants will suffer for want of 

 moisture. But if the earth be kept loose, and in fine tilth, 

 the air that enters into its pores will leave a precious de- 

 posit of moisture in the soil. Notice a plat of fresh dug 

 ground, some dewy morning during a drought, how moist 

 is the surface, and see how hard and dry is the unstirred 

 plot near by ! The air has watered the fresh dug soil 

 more effectually than you could do ; and moisture, too, 

 comes up by capillary attraction from the subsoil, and 

 abundantly, too, if the ground was deeply trenched. " A 

 man will raise more moisture," says Cobbett, " with the 

 hoe and spade in a day, than he can pour on the earth out 

 of a watering-pot in a month." The deposit of moisture on 

 the outside of a pitcher of cold water every one has no- 

 ticed. As the air in contact with the cold surface of the 

 pitcher is robbed of its moisture, which is condensed upon 

 the surface of the pitcher, so the fresh stirred earth con- 

 denses upon its surface the moisture of the air, and con- 

 veys it to the roots of the thirsty plants. If the ground 

 be suffered to become close and compact, the cool surface 

 exposed to the air for the reception of moisture is smaller, 

 and what is deposited does not enter into the earth far 

 enough to be appropriated ; but if the soil be loose and 

 porous, the air enters more deeply, and deposits its moist- 

 ure beneath the surface. Almost any soil in which a seed 

 may be made to germinate will, by continual hoeing, pro- 



