February, 1919 
WISCONSIN HORTICULTURE SUPPLEMENT 
7 
the garden. Any one of a number of 
things may be responsible for such 
loses. One of the common ones is 
subjecting the plant to too sudden 
and great a change. A plant requires 
some time to adjust itself to new con- 
ditions. Because of this it should be 
accustomed to the conditions of the 
garden gradually. This process is 
known as “hardening-off.” Ten days 
to two weeks or more before time for 
setting the plants in the garden begin 
to get them ready for the change. 
Begin by setting the box out in the 
sun at noon for a few minutes. Re- 
GARDEN 
The soils expert groups soils, with 
fine distinctions, into many classes. 
The farmer and the gardener call 
them "light” or “heavy,” “rich” or 
“poor,” “warm” or “cold” soils and 
make a “base hit” every time. 
In the language of the farmer a 
light soil is one containing more sand 
than clay. It is easily worked either 
in spring or summer, and is also a 
warm soil for it absorbs heat more 
readily than a clay soil. But as a 
rule, sandy soils are lower in plant 
food elements than are the heavier 
soils. 
The heavy soil is one having more 
clay than sand and in proportion as 
the clay predominates it is heavy and 
cold but it usually contains abundant 
plant food. 
It is plain, then, that an ideal gar- 
den soil is one that is neither very 
light nor very heavy. It does not fol- 
low, however, that we should fail to 
have a garden even if the ideal soil is 
not available. Some very excellent 
gardens have been made on every un- 
promising sites. It’s largely a matter 
of hard work. 
Don’t Disturb Much Subsoil: 
Below the 4 to 8 inches of mellow, 
usually black, surface soil of tilled 
land lies a different kind of soil called 
the subsoil. <It is not mellow because 
it has probably not been stirred for at 
least ten thousand years. It is 
usually red clay. Sometimes it is 
blue clay. Whatever its color gar- 
deners should leave it undisturbed 
and not turn much of it up on the 
surface of the garden by too deep 
spading. An inch or two won't do 
any harm. It contains plant food but 
usually in a form that is not available 
until sunshine, rain and wind have 
acted on it for a few years. You can’t 
afford to wait so leave the subsoil 
where it ’s: it will hold water for your 
plants next summer. 
Make Haste Slowly: 
No matter what kind of soil you 
have in your garden it must not be 
peat from day to day when favorable 
until the plant can be left out con- 
tinuously. Transplanting will then re- 
sult in much less loss than if a sud- 
den change is made. 
Where plants which transplant with 
difficulty, such as cucumbers and mel- 
ons, are started indoors, or when it is 
desired to have the plants unusually 
large before setting out, flower-pots 
are frequently used. Unless the gar- 
dener has a hotbed or cold-frame or 
the number of plants desired is small, 
this method is not practical because 
of the space required. 
SOILS AND GARDEN 
Frederic Cranefield 
worked when it is wet. If it is it will 
be hard, lumpy and wholly intract- 
able all season. You will lose and not 
gain by working soil before it is fit 
to work. 
When is it fit? There is no hard 
and fast rule but .here is a simple 
test that will answer all practical pur- 
poses. 
Turn up a spadeful of soil, grab a 
handful and squeeze it. If it retains 
the shape of your hand and the finger 
marks, and is smooth and pasty-like 
to the touch, it is not fit. If you can- 
not squeeze the mass lightly without 
breaking it, if it crumbles in your 
hand, go ahead, there is no time to 
lose. iSuch a rough and ready, off- 
hand solution of so difficult a problem 
as this requires the application of 
common sense along with it but the 
writer feels perfectly safe in leaving it 
in just this way. 
First Aids to the Gardener: 
(1) If your garden is anywhere 
but on a side hill you can probably 
advance by several days the time 
when it will be fit to work by a lit- 
tle digging and ditching so as to carry 
off the surface water. This should be 
done as soon as the frost is out of 
the ground. 
(2) Instead 'of spading or plowing 
the entire garden before it is fit, it is 
usually possible to find an odd corner 
somewhere on the premises, even if 
only 2x4 feet, that is higher and drier 
than the garden. Maybe it is the 
flower bed in the front yard or a 
border alongside the horse. Dig and 
rake this and plant a little lettuce 
seed and a little radish seed, 'or mix 
them, and a few onion sets. This 
emergency garden will serve as a curb 
on your very natural impatience, give 
some early vegetables and will not in- 
terfere in the least with flower gar- 
dening later in the season. 
(3) Or, cover a space in the back 
yard, 4x6 feet, with coal ashes a 
foot deep and on top 'of this 2 to 4 
inches of soil. This quantity of dry 
soil can usually be found somewhere 
Instead of setting the plant from the 
seed box into a larger box it is put in a 
small flower-pot. It may remain in 
the pot until set in the field, or it may 
be moved to a larger pot. Various de- 
vices are used as substitutes for pots. 
Two of the more common are the 
bottomless strawberry box and a tin 
can with the bottom removed and 
the side split, so that it may be 
readily removed from around the 
plant. The strawberry box is better 
than the can for this purpose. 
MAKING 
nearby, even if borrowed from a high 
spot in a neighboring lot or field. 
Build around this garden a rough 
frame of boards, sow seeds, and cover 
frame nights and on cold or rainy 
days with two storm windows or, lack- 
ing these, with cheese cloth. What- 
ever else you do keep out of the gar- 
den until the soil is fit to work. 
Manures: 
The soil of almost any garden is 
capable of producing satisfactory 
crops without manure of any kind if 
properly prepared in the spring and 
properly cultivated during the grow- 
ing season. 
The right kind of manure properly 
applied will certainly give increased 
yields but the wrong kind may be 
worse than none at all. The right 
kind is well-rotted stable manure; it 
is fine in texture and mixes readily 
with the soil. Also It Is "pre-di- 
gested”; the plant food contained in it 
has been made ready, by the process 
of decay, for use by the plants. 
The wrong kind is fresh stable ma- 
nure containing much straw or litter. 
This must all be turned under so 
deeply that the plant roots do not get 
to it until midsummer 'or it interferes 
with cultivation. Being coarse it 
serves to “dry out” the soil by inter- 
fering with the movements of soil 
water. Better use none at all. 
Commercial Fertilizers : 
Of the mineral fertilizers, sodium 
nitrate and potash are best. The var- 
ious stock-yards, products including 
pulverized sheep manure, are quick 
acting fertilizers that may either bo 
mixed with the soil when spading or 
plowing or used later as a top-dress- 
ing. 
Mineral fertilizers must be applied 
with great caution to growing plants 
as in slight excess they may kill the 
plants outright. 
These are all very expensive and 
seldom give adequate returns to the 
amateur for the money invested in 
them. 
