44 
the soil will be kept loose and a dust mulch maintained. 
They should not be worked when the soil is too wet or 
clods will be formed and more harm done than good. 
An easy way to tell whether the soil is too wet to work 
is to take a handful of it and try to work it into a mud 
ball. If the mud ball can be made it is too wet to work, 
but if the ball of dirt persists in crumbling it is safe 
to work. 
As previously stated, the very deep cultivation 
should be done before planting. Then the soil can still 
be worked a few inches deep till the plants are about 
half blooming size. This will cause the first roots to go 
deeper. Shortly before the bulbs begin to bloom they 
make an enormous root growth and the soil, even up to 
the surface, is soon full of tiny rootlets. The plant 
needs these and they should not be cut off. So from 
this time on, the cultivation should be very shallow— 
just enough to maintain a fine dust mulch. Nor should 
the later cultivation be too close to the plants, other¬ 
wise bulblets will be dislodged. 
As our methods of cultivation depend on the size 
and kind of beds used, we have taken this up to some 
extent in describing the beds; and in considering the 
tools to be used, we will again take up cultivation. 
TOOLS 
Among the shovels and rakes and cultivators and 
what not, we have found a few tools which seem better 
than anything else and we will describe them briefly, 
for much of the pleasure in gardening, as well as the 
good results obtained, depend on the kind of tools used. 
