30 
House & Garden 
A garden fork is the best 
implement for spreading 
manure. This is the way 
to use it 
See that the manure is scat¬ 
tered evenly over the ground 
to be fertilized, before dig¬ 
ging it in 
A fork is used to break 
the earth lumps 
Get the weight of your 
body as well as foot to 
work when spading 
How to hold a rake for 
smoothing the soil prepara¬ 
tory to planting 
Label each row of seeds 
when you plant it, and 
use a measuring stick 
To make a “drill” for 
beets, parsnips, etc., 
turn the hoe blade on 
end 
Small seeds like carrots 
need a shallow drill, 
made with a pointed 
stick 
Lime will benefit al¬ 
most all garden soils, 
and is essential for 
those which are acid 
BUILDING the GARDEN 
Making Sure of Results by Laying 
a Firm Foundation — A General 
Summary of Important Details 
F. F. ROCKWELL 
ALTHOUGH the beginner at gardening 
il may not realize it, the making of a 
garden is not unlike the building of a house: 
good materials are essential, but the ultimate 
results hinge upon making the foundation 
right. Good seeds and a good plan for the 
arrangement of the different crops are, of 
course, important; but alone they do not by 
any means assure satisfactory results. Years 
of practical experience, or else the closest at¬ 
tention to every detail of preparation and 
planting, are necessary to give the garden a 
strong start toward real success. 
We considered in the March issue the pre¬ 
liminary work—what to do to the soil to make 
it capable of producing big crops. The next 
problem is how to set about getting these big 
crops out of the soil. With this part of the 
foundation of our garden building laid, what 
comes next? 
Preparing for Planting 
To make the whole matter as plain as pos¬ 
sible for the uninitiated, I shall take up the 
matter of soil preparation and planting not 
in a general way, but in detail, item by item. 
Let us assume, therefore, that the garden 
has been plowed and harrowed and thoroughly 
enriched with manure or fertilizer, or with 
both. Possibly there has been a long, beating 
rain which has made the surface compact and 
hard again; or a few days of wind and sun 
that have left it crusted and baked on the 
surface. At last a balmy day comes along, 
the seeds are all on hand, and we are ready 
to plant. We consult our planting tables and 
find out what is to be planted, how far apart 
to put the rows, and so on. But just how 
shall we do the work? 
The very first step is to prepare, for receiv¬ 
ing the seed, as much of the garden as we 
expect to plant at the first sowing. 
This is quite a different operation from 
merely having the garden plowed and har¬ 
rowed or spaded up—as different as putting 
on the ceiling boards or laths and plaster is 
from putting up the rough studding that is 
to support them. Perhaps our planting in¬ 
structions say to “rake the soil off nice and 
smooth with a garden rake”; but if the soil 
has lain for some days in a beating rain or 
in bright sunshine after plowing and harrow¬ 
ing, ordinary raking will have very little effect 
upon it. 
Get out the wheel-hoe and put on the plain, 
vertical cultivator teeth—all of them, and 
evenly spaced. With this you can make a 
cut T to 1 yd wide. Mark off roughly the 
part of the garden you are ready to plant and 
go over it with the wheel-hoe, a strip at a time, 
until the entire surface is loosened up. It 
will be pretty stiff work, but not nearly as hard 
as trying to do it with a rake, and you will 
accomplish several times more. If your gar¬ 
den is so small that you have not a wheel-hoe, 
then you should get one of the adjustable 
cultivator-tooth rakes or hoes which are now 
on the market. These, of course, have no 
wheels, and are pulled instead of being pushed 
like a wheel-hoe. But they will do good work, 
although not quite as fast or as easily as a 
