12 THE AMERICAN GARDENER. [Chap. 



spite of all you can do, keep your spring crops a 

 week or ten days behind those upon land which h(is 

 not a bottom of clay. Gravel is warm, and it would 

 be very desirable, if you could exchange it for some 

 other early in June ; but, since you cannot do this, 

 you must submit to be burnt up in summer, if you 

 have the benefit of a gravelly bottom in the spring. 



18. If the land, where you like to have a garden, 

 has rocks, great or small, they, of course, are to be 

 carried off ; but, if you have a s^ony soil, that is to 

 say, little short of gravel to the very surface, and< 

 if you can get no other spot, you must e'en ham- 

 mer your tools to pieces amongst the stones ; for it 

 has been amply proved by experience, that to carry 

 away stones of the flint or gravel kind impoverishes 

 the land. However, we are not to frame out plans 

 upon the supposition of meeting with obstacles of 

 this extraordinary nature. We are not to suppose, 

 that, in a country where men have had to choose, 

 and have still to choose, they will have built, and 

 yet will build, their houses on spots peculiarly 

 steril. We must suppose the contrary, and, upon 

 that supposition we ought to proceed. 



19. Having fixed upon the spot for the garden, 

 the next thing is to prepare the ground. This may 

 be done by ploughing and harrowing, until the 

 ground, at top, be perfectly clean ; and, then, by 

 double ploughings : that is to say, by going, with a 

 strong plough that turns a large furrow and turns it 

 cleanly, twice in the same place, and thus moving 

 the ground to the depth of fourteen or sixteen inches, 

 for, the advantage of deeply moving the ground is 

 very great indeed. When this has been done in 

 one direction ; it ought to be done across, and then 

 the ground will have been well and truly moved. 

 The ploughing ought to be done with four oxen 



