SOILS AND THEIR PREPARATION 



Many people imagine that in some mysterious fashion 

 plants eat soil much as we eat beef-steak \ and that, all 

 soil being just soil," one has but to make a hole in the 

 ground and thrust the roots of a plant into it, in order 

 to make the desert bloom as the rose. This idea is in- 

 correct, just as was the idea of a Devonshire farmer 

 whom I once saw feeding his month-old baby with 

 cheese and cider. Feed 'un on milk ? " said he. " Fd 

 zooner gee 'un zope-zuds. Let 'un ave summat wi' 

 zum strength in't." 



Soil is to plants not a source of food alone, but is a 

 suit of clothes, a blanket and coverlet, a cooking-range 

 and a drawing-room fire. It is a pied-a-terre in its most 

 literal sense, and it is a cellar and tankard combined. 

 To all the great and beautiful world of flowers, the soil 

 is indeed mother earth, giving them warmth and nourish- 

 ment in their infancy, affording them a root-hold 

 throughout their life, and offering them sanctuary for 

 their bodies when their earthly life is done. 



He who would grow beautiful flowers must therefore 

 first study the soil from which he would raise them. 

 He must get to know it, to learn its wants, and learn also 

 how he may best satisfy them. In time, if he be indeed a 

 lover of flowers, he will grow also to love the earth and 

 to understand it. He will become one of those true 

 and happy gardeners so beloved of the gods that every 

 flower they lovingly plant is made to flourish and 

 multiply. 



86 



