172 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER, 
July 
where the art of cultivating the soil is favoured and 
advancing. In Bengal the soil is stirred no deeper 
than can he effected by means of a short-handled 
heavy kodali, or hoe; in China the surface is merely 
scarified; and in Ireland, among the peasantry, a 
piece of clean, neat digging, with their long-handled, 
narrow-bladed spade, can be very rarely distin¬ 
guished. Tt is not so with other gardening opera¬ 
tions : sowing, hoeing, and manuring, for example, 
are much better performed in all the countries we 
have named. It may be that, digging being a very 
laborious operation, and the more laborious just in 
proportion to its being well done, disinclination to 
exertion is the prime cause of its imperfect perform¬ 
ance. Be this as it may, it is quite certain that dig¬ 
ging is the most laborious operation connected with 
the gardener’s art; and yet, as we have observed on 
a former occasion, very few people ever consider in 
detail the expenditure of labour required from the 
gardener when digging: it is a labour above all 
others calling into exercise the muscles of the human 
frame, and how great is the amount of this exercise 
may be estimated from the following facts:— 
In digging a square perch of ground in spits of 
the usual dimensions (seven inches by eight inches), 
the spade has to be thrust in 700 times; and as each 
spadeful of earth, if the spade penetrates nine inches, 
as it ought to do, will weigh on the average full 
seventeen pounds, 11,900 pounds of earth have to be 
lifted, and the customary pay for doing this is two¬ 
pence halfpenny. As there are 100 perches or rods 
in an acre, in digging the latter measure of ground 
the garden labourer has to cut out 112,000 spadesful 
of earth, weighing in the aggregate 17,000 cwt., or 
850 tons, and during the work he moves over a dis 
tance of fourteen miles. As the spade weighs be¬ 
tween eight and nine pounds, he has to lift, in fact, 
during the work, half as much more weight than that 
above specified, or 1278 tons. An able-bodied la¬ 
bourer can dig ten square perches a day, or even 
more if the soil be light, and sufficiently moist to 
cling well together. But we shall observe more upon 
this ere we conclude. 
Before giving any practical directions for the best 
mode of digging, let us consider what are its objects. 
These are, to loosen the soil so that the roots of the 
crop which is to be grown upon it may easily pene¬ 
trate that soil, and find food for sustaining the growth 
of the plants ; consequently the deeper a root natu¬ 
rally strikes, the deeper should the soil he dug ; and 
as roots always travel in the direction where the best 
food is to be found, manure should be buried deep in 
digging ground for carrots and other tap-rooted vege¬ 
tables, but should be kept near the surface in digging 
the ground for dwarf kidney beaus, and other crops 
having fibrous roots. 
Decaying vegetable and animal matters are not 
the only food required to be presented to roots for 
the well-being of the plants to which they belong. 
Those roots require the presence also of the gases of 
our atmosphere, and moisture. This explains why, 
in digging, it is found most advantageous to cut 
small spadesful at a time, thus facilitating the pul¬ 
verizing of the soil; for, just in proportion to its clods 
being broken down fine, can the air and its moisture 
penetrate deeply within it. By moisture, we do not 
intend only the rain and the dew, but the moisture 
always present dissolved in the air of our atmosphere. 
A provision of its Creator, of which even our re¬ 
stricted powers can readily perceive the wisdom and 
the beneficence, is that the air contains more mois¬ 
ture in hot weather than in cold, a fact we must have 
all observed by the dew deposited upon cold wine¬ 
glasses when brought into a warm room. Now, all 
soil is gifted with the power of absorbing that mois¬ 
ture from the air; and every one conversant with a 
garden must have noticed how refreshed plants are 
by having the earth stirred round about them, a re¬ 
freshment arising chiefly from the air being thus en¬ 
abled to penetrate better to the soil near their roots, 
and thus for that soil to attract from it its moisture. 
That well-pulverized soil does attract moisture more 
powerfully than hard cloddy soil is not known either 
from reasoning or from garden practice alone, but 
has been demonstrated also in the laboratory of the 
chemist. Professor Sehluber ascertained that 1000 
grains of stiff clay absorbed, in twenty-four hours, 
only thirty-six grains of moisture from the air, 
whilst a loose garden soil absorbed in the same 
period of time forty-five grains; and magnesia, a 
still more finely divided body, absorbed seventy-six 
grains. 
Then, again, pulverizing the soil enables it to 
retain the moisture absorbed better. This we de¬ 
monstrated some years since, and the reason is 
obviously because a hard soil becomes heated by the 
sun’s rays much more' rapidly than one with a 
loosened texture. The latter is better permeated by 
the air, which is one of the worst conductors of 
heat. Mr. Barnes is quite of the same opinion, for 
he says, “ I do not agree with those who tell us one 
good weeding is worth two hoeings; I say, never 
weed any crop in which a hoe can be got between 
the plants; not so much for the sake of destroying 
weeds and vermin, which must necessarily be the 
case if hoeing be done well, as for increasing the 
porosity of the soil, to allow the water and air to 
penetrate freely through it. I am well convinced, 
by long and close practice, that oftentimes there is 
more benefit derived by crops from keeping them 
well hoed, than there is from the manure applied. 
Weeds or no weeds, still I keep stirring the soil; 
well knowing, from practice, the very beneficial 
effect which it has.” 
We have said that tire depth to which soil should 
be dug, and where the food afforded them by manure 
