Soils 



81 



The soil to avoid is hard clay. It is cold and late. 

 Plants start slowly in it. It cannot be worked when 

 either wet or dry ; and the period in which it can be 

 tilled is so short that much labor and equipment are 

 required to enable one to handle it quickly and effi- 

 ciently. Clay is excellent for some fruits (particularly 

 pears and plums), and for some general farm crops; 

 but it is not the land for vegetable-growing. How- 

 ever, a friable clay loam may be excellent : this loamy 

 condition may be obtained from hard clay soil by judi- 

 cious tillage, the incorporation of humus, the addition 

 of amendments in special cases, and by underdraining. 

 Clay loams are good lands for main-season crops of 

 many kinds, as cabbage, pea, bean. 



Reclaimed swamps usually afford excellent soil for 

 vegetables, if the area can be thoroughly well drained, 

 so that the land is early, and if the vegetable 

 matter or peat is well decomposed and comminuted. 

 Soils which are nearly all muck have little body, and 

 suffer from drought ; these soils are mostly the deposit 

 of peat and moss bogs. The fine loams which have 

 accumulated in beds of shallow ponds or lakes are 

 usually ideal vegetable -garden lands, providing the 

 area is not too frosty. 



When the object in vegetable -gardening is to grow very 

 early crops, it is important to have quick-acting land. Such a 

 soil contains a large amount of sand in its composition. * ^ 

 When the intention is to raise cabbages, potatoes, turnips, beets, 

 etc., for marketing in the autumn and for crops that require 

 but a short time to mature or that prefer a cool location, a good 

 clayey loam is generally, the best. — S. B. Green, Vegetable- Gar- 

 dening ^ Second Ed.y 8, 



F 



