Feb.] the KITCHEN GARDEN. 113 
But when necessary to have the whole space of the kitchen gar- 
den employed for real use, no ground should be lost in ornamental 
borders and walks: have a border all around the boundary fence, 
five or six feet wide, except the south borders, which should be 
seven or eight feet broad, because of their great use for raising 
early crops; and have a walk around the garden, not more than a 
yard to live or six feet wide, allowing the same width for the mid- 
dle walks, or so as to admit of wheelbarrows passing to bring in 
the manure, &c., and may either have a four feet wide border all 
around each quarter next the walks, or not, as you shall think proper j 
laying the walks neatly with any gravelly materials, or with coal 
ashes, &c. , so as to have dry walking and wheeling with a barrow 
in all weathers. 
General Culture of the Ground. 
With respect to the general culture of the kitchen garden, it 
consists principally in a general annual digging, proper manuring, 
sowing and planting the crops properly, pricking out, planting, and 
transplanting various particular crops, keeping the ground clean 
from weeds, and watering the crops occasionally in summer. 
As to digging, a general digging must be performed annually in 
winter or spring, for the reception of the principal crops; also as 
often as any new crops are to be sown or planted at any season of 
the year, remarking that the general digging for the recpptlon of 
the main crops of principal esculents in spring, I should advise to 
be performed by trenching either one or two spades deep, besides 
the paring at top, though except for some deep rooting plants, as 
carrots, parsneps, &c., one good spade deep may be sufficient for 
common trenching, unless on particular occasions, to trench as 
deep as the good soil admits, to turn the exhausted earth to the 
bottom and the fresh to the top to renew the soil. However, you 
should be careful not to trench deeper than the proper soil; and 
the trenching only one spade deep, will much more effectually 
renew the soil than plain digging; and by paring the top of each 
trenching two or three inches deep into the bottom, all seeds of 
weeds on the surface are thereby buried so deep that they cannot 
grow; and I should likewise advise that the general digging be 
performed principally, especially in stift' ground, before the setting 
in of the winter frosts, or early in spring; but it would be better 
done if some considerable time before the season for putting in the 
crops, that the ground might have the advantage of fallow, to melio- 
rate and enrich it, and always let the ground be trenched in rough 
ridges, that it may receive all possible benefit from the sun, air, 
rains, frosts, &c., to fertilize and pulverize the soil before it is 
levelled down for the reception of seeds and plants; and this level- 
ling down will be an additional improvement in breaking, dividing, 
and meliorating the earth. Plain digging, however, may be suffi- 
cient for most of the slight crops, especially in summer or autumn, 
after the ground has been trench-digged in tlie general winter or 
spring digging. 
P 
