258 
FLORICULTURAL (ECONOMICS. 
are cultivated^ if it can be at all avoided ; though the injury is greatly increased 
when such ground is full of moisture. 
It may be safely taken as a rule, therefore, that anything which has to be 
done to plants cultivated in beds, borders, &c., or to the ground in which they are 
growing, should be done while that ground is dry. 
As another item in the same category, we might mention the practice of 
raking ground that is ornamentally planted. It certainly tends to heighten the 
finished aspect of a garden, and to impart a considerable air of neatness. But if 
carelessly performed on a soil that is tolerably retentive, while that soil is for the 
most part saturated with wet, its result is most pernicious. It then serves only to 
fill up the pores and interstices of the earth, to compact it together into a com- 
paratively solid mass, and to check that ready permeability to air and fluids which 
constitutes one of the most important points in good cultivation. 
Passing from raking, and its almost necessary precursor, hoeing, it is natural 
to glance at the opposite course of weeding by hand, so as to avoid either. Hand- 
weeding is, without question, the most effectual way of ridding ground from any 
troublesome pest by which it may be beset. Yet, there is much danger here, too, 
of falling into error by pursuing it at improper periods or to an undue extent. 
The unsuitable seasons are when the weather is particularly wet, as it then leads 
to the trampling of the ground before condemned, notwithstanding that this is the 
time commonly selected for the process, on account of the facility with which 
weeds may be drawn out if the ground be moist ; and likewise while extreme 
drought prevails, weeds not only being at that time difficult to extract, but 
endangering the displacement of small or delicate plants by their removal. What 
we mean by carrying on hand-weeding to an undue degree is, by allowing it to 
supersede the use of the hoe or any other implement which would stir and open 
the ground. 
Those who have habituated themselves to notice the facts daily occurring 
around them, will have frequently observed that where a bed or group of plants 
has been freed from weeds and rubbish only by the hand, the specimens have 
invariably been sickly, simply for want of having the soil loosened around them. 
This is especially perceptible in those circles of annuals which are reared in flower 
borders, and from which both weeds and superfluous plants have been taken away 
by the hand. It is similarly observable in beds or masses of flowering plants 
reared from seed, or even in groups of transplanted sorts. Hence, to those who 
prefer hand-weeding in special and convenient cases, as a means of permanently 
clearing ground, we would strongly suggest the subsequent use of the hoe or small 
fork immediately around the plants, to give both an entrance and an outlet to 
those gases and fluids which may be useful or hurtful to the plants. 
Whilst we are speaking of those operations which are to be governed 
chiefly by the state of the weather, or rather the continuous action of any one 
variety of it, we may as well allude to such as are still more entirely subjected 
