L] THE AMERICAN GARDENER. 13 



and the plough ought to be held by a strong and 

 careful ploughman. 



20. This is as much as I shall, probably, be able 

 to persuade any body to do in the way of preparing 

 the ground. But, this is not all that ought to be 

 done ; and it is proper to give directions for the 

 best way of doing this and every thing else. The 

 best way is, then, to trench the ground ; which is 

 performed in this manner. At one end of the piece 

 of ground, intended for the garden, you make, with 

 a spade, a trench, all along, two feet wide and two 

 feet deep. You throw the earth out on the side 

 away from the garden that is to be. You shove] 

 out the bottom clean, and make the sides of the 

 trench as nearly perpendicular as possible. Thus 

 you have a clean open trench, running all along one 

 end of your garden-ground. You then take an- 

 other piece all along, two feet wide, and put the 

 earth that this new piece contains into the trench 

 taking off the top of the new two feet wide, and 

 turning that top down into the bottom of the trench, 

 and then taking the remainder of the earth of the 

 new two feet, and placing it on the top of the earth 

 just turned into the bottom of the trench. Thus, 

 when you have again shovelled out the bottom, and 

 put it on the top of the whole that you have put 

 into the trench, you have another clean trench two 

 feet wide and two deep. You thus proceed, till the 

 whole of your garden-ground be trenched ; and then 

 it will have been cleanly turned over to the depth 

 of two feet. 



21. As to the expense of this preparatory opera- 

 tion, a man that knows how to use a spade, wil 

 trench four rod in a day very easily in the month a 

 October, or in the month of November if the grour 

 be not frozen. Supposing the garden to contaU 



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