130 
SOUTHERN CULTIVATOR. 
Once a week is enough, and give plenty ot pure water after 
the application of the manure. 
The Strawberry patch should receive a good working 
with pronged hoes, to avoid injuring the roots. After 
thus loosening up the soil, replace the mulching, and there 
will be little trouble with the weeds for the remainder ol 
the season. If cultivating solely for fruit, the runners 
must be scrupulously kept down. 
Weeds will now begin to infest your garden, and must 
be ruthlessly destroyed at tneir first appearance. 
Thb Orchard and Fruit Garden. — Destroy Catter- 
pillar’s nests wherever found on your fruit trees. If the 
branches are crowded or over-laden with thickly-set fruit 
thin out one hall of it, and the remainder will be enough 
better to pay for the trouble. 
Dust over the Plum and Nectarine trees with a mixture 
of quick lime, ashes and sulphur, while the dew is on the 
leaves, to destroy the curculio. 
The Flower Garden. — Shade, water, weed, cultivate 
and mulch your flowers and notice the general directions 
for last month in this department. 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF TILLAGE. 
In developing his philosophy of tillage, at page 236, 
Tull reaches the following conclusions : — “From all that 
has been said, these may be laid down as maxims, viz: 
that the same quantity of tillage will produce the same 
quantity of food in the same land; and that the same 
quantity of food will maintain the same quantity of veget- 
ables,” 
The first named maxim is unquestionably sound and 
true, provided the conditions of the earth tilled are alike 
in all respects when the cultivation takes place. But the 
same quantity of tillage when the ground is too wet to 
plow will not produce the same amount of plant food that 
would be obtained if the earth was dry enough to break 
up into fine, pulverized particles Again, it is known 
that the longer a field is tilled without rest or manure, the 
more adhesive, compact, and dead the clay and other 
earthy particles become; so that any given quantity of 
cultivation produce-' a smaller quantity of plant food, and 
less friability and comminution ol soil as the stirred earth 
approaches exhaustion, and demands renovation. On the 
other hand, the length of time which some fields not flood 
ed nor irrigated by a river or other stream, will remain 
fertile without manure, and by wise cultivation alone, is 
truly remarkable. Tull’s long residence in France and 
Italy extended his observation of the results of cultivation 
alone in maintaining peiennial fruitfulness. On the page 
above cited, he says : “A vineyard, if not tilled, will soon 
decay, even in rich ground, as may be seen in those in 
France, lying intermingled as our lands do, in common 
fields. Those lands of vines which, by reason of some 
law suit depending about them, lie a year or two untilled 
produce no grapes, send out no shoots haidly ; the leaves 
look yellow, and seem dead, in comparison with those on 
each side of them, which, being tilled, are full of fruit, 
and send out a hundred times more wood, and their leaves 
are large and flourishing ; and continue to do so for ages, 
if the plow or hoe do not neglect themP 
The experience of every man of years and close obser- 
vation in vine culture will corroborate the remarks of this 
accute student of nature. The earth thoroughly stirred 
by the implements of tillage yields, by the chemical de- 
composition of its own compounds, potash, salts of lime, 
and other minerals required to form the v/ood and fruit of 
the vine. All the leaves and trimmings of the plants pro- 
duced every year being added to the soil to increase its 
mould, and the earthy elements which would form ashes 
in case these leaves and trimmings were- burnt, its fertil- 
ity in many vineyards needs no other fertilizers for cen- 
turies, if ever. What is really removed from the soil in 
fruit IS fully restored from the atmosphere and the deep 
subsoil in a way which every cultivator ought to under- 
stand. Very pertinently does Tull call attention to the 
fact, that no change of crop needed in vine culture for 
ages on the same ground. Be says: “But what in the 
vineyards proves this thesis mostfully is, that where they 
constantly till the low vines Vi?-ith the plow, which is al- 
most the same with the hoe plow, the stems are planted 
about four feet asunder chequer-wise; so that they plow 
them four ways. Whf>n any of these plants happen to die, 
new ones are immediately planted in their room, and ex- 
actly in the points or angles where the others have rot- 
ted; else, if planted out of these angles, they would stand 
in the way of the plow. These young vines, I say, in 
the very graves, as it were, of their predecessors, grovit^, 
thrive, and prosper well, the soil being thus constantly 
tilled. If a plum tree, or any other plant had such tillage, 
it might as well succeed one of its own species, as these 
vines do.” 
The above remarks made about 140 years ago, bring 
us fairly to the point ; how does tillage ever perpetuate 
fruitfulness without manure, for centuries in succession 1 
The supply of water and gases from the ever-moving 
atmosphere will not alone meet all the requirements of 
grape vines and their annual fruits ; nor wdl any given 
amount of clay, sand and vegetable mould yield an ever-en- 
during, and therefore, an unlimited quantity of earthy salts, 
like potash, lime, &c. 
In the first place, we would state the important fact, that 
all soil in all situations will not yield annual crops 
grapes for removal no more than annual crops of wheat 
to be sent to distant markets, without manure of some 
kind to replenish the soil. The loss of fertility results 
often less from the deficiency of bone-earth, potash, soda, 
magnesia, chlorine and sunhuric acid in the soil stirred by 
the plow than from the imperviousness of the subsoil, 
which prevents the ascent of water during the hot summer 
months about the roots of vines and other plants, to sup- 
ply them with the earthy salts needed for their 
healthy growth. Subsoil plowing, double spading and 
trenching, so useful in vine culture, break the under crust, 
and operate at once to facilitate the ascent of plant food 
from below upward, and to augment the total capacity of 
the ground both above and below the roots of plants, to 
hold all fe.tilizing gases, whether from the atmosphere or 
decaying vegetation, and all uqueous and mineral aliment 
required to bring them lo lull maturity. Deep and 
thorough tillage enlarges the store-house of plant food, 
and gives vastly mure pulverized earth in which the 
myriads of tender rootlets are able to develop themselves 
for the sustenance of a common parent. 
Good culture renders the ground that was before com- 
