D. M. FERRY A CO’S DESCRIPTIVE CATALOGUE. 
7 
be well ploughed or spaded, taking care if it is a clay soil that the work is not done when it is too wet. If a handful 
from the bottom of the furrow moulds with slight pressure into a ball which cannot be easily crumbled into fine 
earth again, the soil is too wet, and if plowed then will be hard to work all summer. The surface should be made as 
fine and smooth as possible with the harrow or rake, and in case of sandy soils, it should be rolled with a heavy 
roller. It is generally necessary to plow the whole garden at once, and to do this in time for the earliest crops, but 
Scene on D. M. Ferry & Co*s Greenfield Seed Farms- -CU RI N G ONION SEED. 
the part which is not planted for some weeks should b'* Kept mellow by frequent cultivation. Stiff clay soils are 
frequently wonderfully improved by trenching, that is, spading two feet deep in such a way as to leave the surface 
soil on top. This is accomplished by digging a trench two feet wide across one side, and a second one adjoining 
and parallel with it one spade deep. The remaining earth of the second trench is then thrown into the first and 
covered with the surface soil from a third trench; the balance of the third is then thrown into the second and 
•covered with the surface of the fourth; and so on until all is worked over, when the soil from the first trench is 
■used to fill the last. This is quite expensive, but frequently changes a soil upon which nothing can be grown, into 
one producing the finest vegetables, and its effects last for several years. 
