THE AMATEUR ’S KITCHEN GARDEN. 21 
leafy garniture. The fable of Antseus is an epitome of the 
life of man, and illustrates, in its own heroic way, the spiritual 
and material tonic that may be derived from farming and gar- 
dening. 
Soils. — In determining what to grow and how to manage, 
you will have to face this difficulty — that no garden, however 
favourable in a general way the soil and climate and surround- 
ings may be, is equally adapted for all the kinds of vegetables 
and fruits you will wish to derive from it. The consequence is 
that you will have to effect compromises and make shifts, and 
in the end, perhaps, make yourself content with inferior pro- 
ducts of some kinds, while, let us hope, you will have plenty 
of superior products of other kinds to compensate abundantly. 
Moreover, it matters not how well versed you may be in 
geology and chemistry and the requirements of plants, you 
will have to learn much on the spot, and you will have to 
respect the genius loci, and be in no haste to regard as nonsense 
the “wise saws” of your neighbours who may tell you that 
yours is a wonderful land for parsley, but won’t do for aspara- 
gus ; or that it suits cauliflowers beyond all expectation, but 
will not produce potatoes fit to eat. A deep sandy loam will 
suit almost every crop you can think of as proper for a kitchen 
garden, and deep retentive clay may be made one of the best 
soils in the world by means of hard work and judicious manur- 
ing and cropping. If you are located on clay, you ought to 
embrace every opportunity of carting in at a cheap rate lime- 
rubbish and sandy road drift. If on peat, lime-rubbish and 
clay will be valuable materials, and bone the best of manures. 
If on chalk or gravel, clay, turf, pond-mud, and fat manure 
will be of immense advantage. There is scarcely a soil to be 
found that does not need the occasional help of good stable 
manure, but it certainly does tend to make light soils lighter, 
so that it is possible in some cases its employment may be 
less advantageous than others. 
But it is nevertheless a golden rule that to use manure in 
excess is scarcely possible, and the market gardens in the 
neighbourhood of London may always be pointed to in illus- 
tration of the rule. It is scarcely an exaggeration to say that 
for every load of vegetables taken off the ground a load of 
good stable manure is put on. The waggon that goes to mar- 
ket with a load of cabbages calls on the way home at some 
brewery or omnibus yard for a load of manure, ami thus the 
