THE HANDLING OF THE LAND 



103 



Fig. 95. These interesting shapes represent the suggestions of 

 gardeners who will not be bound by what the market affords, 

 but who have blades cut and fitted for their own satisfaction. 



Persons who followed the entertaining writings of one who 

 called himself Mr. A. B. Tarryer, in ''American Garden/' a 

 few years back, will recall the great variety of implements that 

 he advised for the purpose of extirpating his hereditary foes, 

 the weeds. A variety of these blades and tools is shown in 

 Figs. 96 and 97. I shall let 

 Mr. Tarryer tell his story at 

 some length in order to lead 

 my reader painlessly into a new 

 field of gardening pleasures. 



Mr. Tarryer contends that the 

 wheel-hoe is much too clumsy 

 an affair to allow of the pursuit 

 of an individual weed. While 

 the operator is busy adjusting 

 his machine and manipulating 

 it about the corners of the 



garden, the quack-grass has. Some of the details of the Tarryer 



escaped over the fence or has 



gone to seed at the other end of the plantation. He devised 

 an expeditious tool for each little work to be performed 

 on the garden, — for hard ground and soft, for old weeds and 

 young (one of his implements was denominated ''infant- 

 damnation "). 



"Scores of times during the season," Mr. Tarryer writes, 

 "the ten or fifteen minutes one has to enjoy in the flower, 

 fruit, and vegetable garden — and that would suffice for the 

 needful weeding with the hoes we are celebrating — would be 

 lost in harnessing horses or adjusting and oiling squeaky 

 wheel-hoes, even if everybody had them. The 'American 

 Garden' is not big enough, nor my patience long enough, to 



