26 
THE AMATEUR’S KITCHEN GARDEN. 
The Order of Cropping, or the “Rotation” of crops, is 
of much less importance in gardening than in farming. If a 
starving system of cultivation be followed, the crops must be 
moved about, and even then they are not likely to be worth 
harvesting. But in proportion as the ground is at every 
opportunity well dug and liberally manured, the necessity for 
observing a distinct order of cropping becomes less and less 
necessary. The principle of rotation is simple enough. We 
grow on a piece deep-rooted and somewhat exhaustive crops, 
such as parsnips, potatoes, carrots, and salsify. For these we 
will suppose the ground was trenched two spits deep, and had 
a winter’s frost upon it before the crops were sown. We may 
be content to flat dig next year one spit deep, putting in a 
dressing of manure and laying out the land for seed beds and 
saladings. Next year it may serve for peas, cauliflowers, and 
celery ; the next for kidney beans, beets, collards, and saladings ; 
the next to be trenched for another lot of roots. It was for- 
merly supposed that while a plant took from the ground 
certain mineral constituents, it left behind elements that ren- 
dered the land unfit to produce the same plant again until 
some other plant, which could appropriate those objectionable 
elements or excreta as food, had been grown upon it as a 
refresher. The hypothesis has long been abandoned as ridicu- 
lous. The land does indeed become “tired” of a certain 
plant after a time, if we may use the term ; but the reason is 
that the plant it is tired of, has taken all it could obtain of 
certain silicates, phosphates, and other mineral matters, and 
there is not enough of these elements of plant-growth left to 
sustain the same plant any longer. This brings us to the 
idea of a fallow. By allowing the land to “rest,” a fresh 
supply of silicates, phosphates, etc., is obtained for it, for the 
air, and the dew, and the rain, and the sunshine are continually 
breaking down the mineral constituents, the very pebbles are 
slowly dissolved and the organic matter in the soil decays, 
and in due time this “clover-sick” or “turnip-tired” soil will 
again produce clover or turnips, or whatever else it may have 
been tired of in past seasons. Manuring and stirring obviate 
the necessity for fallowing ; and the more heartily these re- 
novating operations are carried on, the less necessary is it to 
observe any system of rotation. The potato is, in a greater 
degree than any other garden plant, benefited by being moved 
about from place to place, or, if possible, grown on ground 
