256 
THE PLANTING SEASON, 
chosen for performing it, is the preparation of the ground, the selection of the 
plants, and the mode of conducting their transplantation. We shall speak of each 
of these separately. 
It has been too customary to regard any trouble expended in preparing a plot 
for planting, as labour thrown away, or, at any rate, as by no means of that 
practical use which theoretical writers represent it to be. And much as this 
delusion has lately shrunk away before the clear light of experience, its influences 
are yet prevailingly felt and acted upon. Yet there cannot be a more radical 
error. The most elaborate preparation is always more than repaid. Draining, 
trenching, manuring, the admixture of lighter or more adhesive ingredients, and 
the attending to all this a sufficient length of time before the planting takes place 
to allow of due incorporation, pulverisation, the decay of weeds dug in, and so 
forth, are, as it were, the very elements of the plants' future well-being. 
That is a very contracted and ill-judging policy which carefully adapts the 
mere pit in which each plant is to be placed, and leaves the rest of the ground 
undisturbed, or only partially worked. Every portion of the plot should be 
thoroughly stirred, and the whole rendered equally suitable, or, in a few years 
after planting, many of the specimens will be seen making but miserable and 
imperfect growths at the points of their shoots. Every cultivator who has 
travelled at all will have noticed, in many places that have passed under his 
observation, the newly-planted things, and such as have only been growing on the 
place a few years, look healthy and well, while those which are of longer standing 
begin to get stunted and weakly at the top, and to relapse into premature decay. 
This is a striking illustration of the effects from undue preparation for planting, 
and should act as a powerful caution as well as stimulus. 
The bad consequences we have just described, occurring as they do, in general, 
from want of proper preparation of the soil, arise, in particular, from the neglect 
of two processes in that preparation, viz., draining and meliorating, or mellowing. 
A deficiency of adequate draining is, perhaps, the greatest evil, and its effects are 
soonest manifest. But we have seen instances in which ground was nearly as dry 
as it is required to be towards the surface, while it was perfectly saturated in wet 
weather at from nine to fifteen or eighteen inches below the top. Plants have 
thriven in this, as a matter of course, till their roots reached the wet part, and 
then they have suddenly gone back. Hence we deduce that the superficial aspect 
and dryness of ground should not be depended upon, but that it ought to be 
drained to a reasonable depth, — say thirty inches or three feet. 
Nor is the absence of right preparation, in regard to the amelioration of a 
soil's texture and quality, a thing of so much lighter influence that it can be 
incurred with impunity. We have in our recollection an estate having been 
planted, where the soil was clayey, by the addition of a small quantity of lighter 
earth to just the limited spot on which each plant was put; and though the result 
was for a short time satisfactory, directly the plants pushed their roots beyond the 
