August, 19 ti 
HOUSE AND GARDEN 
99 
percolate down into it, and remain there, as in a vast shallow cis¬ 
tern, to be drawn upon when needed in the hot drought days. 
All this may seem like a lot of detailed technical information, 
useless to the man with only a small vegetable garden, and a quar¬ 
ter of an acre of potatoes. 
In proportion to the extent of his operations, it is just as im¬ 
portant to him as to the man who raises crops by the acre. He 
will find it much less tiresome and expensive to insist on having 
his small garden properly plowed and prepared, and also much 
more effective, than to be driven to the necessity of lugging pails 
of water, evening after evening, and to sprinkling it about the sur¬ 
face of his garden, when there should be barrelsful stored at the 
bottom of it. 
So much for the first step in preparing for the fight against 
drought. The second is deep harrowing. Too often the only 
thing accomplished in harrowing is to get the surface of the soil 
level and smooth enough to run the seed-drill in. The condition 
of the surface should not be thought of until the upper four or 
five inches of soil is thorough¬ 
ly fined—pulverized until you 
can stick your hand down in 
it anywhere without encoun¬ 
tering lumps. Generally speak¬ 
ing, the disk-harrow is best 
for this purpose. On certain 
soils, the ‘‘spading," “spike- 
tooth" or “spring tooth" types 
of harrow may be preferable 
— but the man who hires his 
work of this kind done for 
him is not likely to have much 
choice in the way of special 
implements. Whatever sort 
of harrow is used, the ground 
should bo gone over until 
there are no lumps or clods, 
and all is fine and mellow. 
The importance of this work, 
as far as drought-fighting is 
concerned, is that there shall 
not be crevices and air pock¬ 
ets left to aid in drying out 
the upper layer of soil, and to 
prevent the formation of the 
important “dust-m u 1 c h" of 
of which more is said later on. 
The third step, of course, is 
the fining of the surface, for 
which some form of smooth¬ 
ing-harrow, or a brush drag, 
is used. The surface should be 
left as near the condition of 
ashes as possible,—the finer 
the better, provided the 
ground is not gone over so 
frequently as to pack it down 
hard, for we have already 
seen the importance of having 
a soil through which water 
will soak quickly. The finish¬ 
ing touches are usually given 
with the garden rake. (It is of 
importance that the piece be 
planted as soon as this final 
working-over is given, and 
while the surface is still fresh 
and moist.) 
That answers for the preparation of the land—deep plowing, 
deep harrowing and fine finishing. But the condition of the 
land has also a great deal to do with the matter. It should be in 
that shape which tillers of the soil are wont to term "in good 
heart," that is, besides being rich, it must contain an abundance 
of humus, — a condition which to the uninitiated may perhaps best 
be illustrated by the difference between a piece of silk and a piece 
of flannel, as regards their capacity for absorbing water. Soil 
containing plenty of humus will absorb water like a sponge; soil 
deficient in humus will pack and get muddy, and then get lumpy 
and bake. Thus all important humus is furnished mostly by de¬ 
cayed vegetable matter, either directly by rotted roots and sod, or 
indirectly by stable manure. 
Where land is kept constantly under cultivation, as in the mar¬ 
ket gardens near large cities, stable manure is an absolute neces¬ 
sity, not only for the plant-food it furnishes, but for additional 
humus to the over-worked soil. In farm work, and in the home 
garden that can occasionally be shifted from one place to another, 
fertilizers may be substituted 
for manures, at least to a 
large extent. Another source 
of humus, too infrequently 
used in the small garden, is 
"green manuring” or the turn¬ 
ing - under of some green crop 
such as rye, buckwheat, or 
fodder corn. Very often a 
strip of the garden is left to 
barrenness or weeds, harmful 
and unsightly, where a half- 
hour's work and practically no 
expense would have made an 
even, pretty patch of green, to 
be turned under after a few 
weeks’ growth. 
With soil in the proper con¬ 
dition, deeply plowed and 
carefully harrowed, we have 
made every provision for stor¬ 
ing all the water we can. The 
second equation in the prob¬ 
lem is to save it. 
In the first part of this arti¬ 
cle I spoke of three ways in 
which the rainfall was lost,—- 
by running off either on the 
subsoil or the surface, and by 
being drawn to the surface 
and there evaporated. It is 
the third of these that does 
the damage, for most of the 
water lost in the first two 
ways is merely a surplus that 
we cannot use. The evapora¬ 
tion, however, continues day 
after day, week after week, 
wasting the reserve supply 
that is so vitally necessary to 
plant growth. Spill a dipper 
of water on the surface of 
your garden some hot or 
windy day, and note how soon 
it vanishes — all into the air, 
for examination will show 
that it did not soak down. 
Now if that quantity of water 
(Continued on page 122) 
It is not an expensive matter to run a line of second-hand pipe 
from the house to several points in the garden; from these a 
hose connection is made 
