The Soil 



71 



would otherwise either run off and be lost altogether, 

 or collect in the lower parts of the garden ; and last, 

 and most important, it enables the soil to retain mois- 

 ture thus stored, as in a subterranean storage tank, 

 but where the plants can draw upon it, long after 

 carelessly prepared and shallow soils are burning 

 up in the long protracted drouths which we seem 

 to be increasingly certain of getting during the late 

 summer. 



Prepare your garden deeply, thoroughly, care- 

 fully, in addition to making it rich, and you may 

 then turn to those more interesting operations out- 

 lined in the succeeding pages, with the well founded 

 assurance that your thought and labor will be re- 

 warded by a garden so remarkably more successful 

 than the average garden is, that all your extra pains- 

 taking will be richly repaid. 



