GARDEN GUIDE POSTS 
PREPARING 
THE GARDEN SOIL 
A good gardener can be told by 
the way he treats the soil. No 
gardener worthy of the name 
works it when it is so wet that it 
will pack. Abuse of the soil may 
ruin it for the entire season. Use 
the mud pie test already described 
before digging or plowing. 
If your soil is heavy clay, lime 
added before plowing will help 
break it up. Even more valuable is 
decayed vegetable matter of some 
sort—peat moss, humus, old manure 
or leaf mould. 
Do not apply fresh manure to 
green vegetation in spring be- 
cause, as this decays, it will form 
a gas that will hurt roots. 
If necessary to make a garden on 
sod, skin off the sod and add it to 
the compost heap. If the garden is 
fall-plowed, however, sod can be 
turned under and will decay fairly 
well if lime and fertilizer are ap- 
plied at the same time. 
To Dig or Plow 
Many a gardener has wasted 
precious time waiting for a plow- 
man to turn over a garden that 
could easily be turned over with a 
spade and would be in better con- 
dition than if packed by a heavy 
tractor. Hand digging, if properly 
done, is better for a garden than 
tractor plowing. Larger areas, of 
course, must be worked by machin- 
ery, but if possible, do the final 
finishing by hand. 
The trick of hand spading is to 
take your time. A good sized gar- 
den can be turned over in about 
a week by working at it an hour 
a day. When you dig, don’t cheat 
the spade. Drive it straight down, 
lift the entire clod and turn it 
completely upside down. hit it 
with the back of a spade, and if 
the soil is in good condition it 
will crumble. 
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To be sure that each clod is actu- 
ally turned over, remove a trench 
along the beginning of the garden 
just one spade wide. Then as each 
spadeful is lifted, turn it over into 
this trench, 




Vegetables? Of course! But 
this year plant plenty of 
flowers, too! 
The soil removed from the first row 
is wheeled around to where you plan 
to finish, and is used to fill the last 
trench or spit. 
Trenching (the method used by 
these) does not pay for a temporary 
garden, but should be practiced by 
home owners who plan to work the 
same plot year after year. In this 
method a trench is dug two full 
spades deep. 
Manure or compost is spread over 
the top of the entire garden and 
also at the ‘bottom of each trench 
as dug. The second row of soil is 
thrown into the bottom of the trench 
and the layer just below it is 
thrown on top of it. In this way the 
entire garden is turned upside down 
and the ground is loose and friable 
to a depth of nearly two feet. 
Because considerable subsoil is 
mixed with the upper layer, an extra 
application of fertilizer to the gar- 
den after digging is good practice. 
From the second year on, the soil 
should get better and better, even 
though it is only turned over one 
spade deep each year. 
How Much Fertilizer? 
What Kind? 
Well rotted manure and compost 
are important to the production 
of good crops and they do feed 
plants, but it must be remem- 
bered that they do not contain 
the type of nitrogen that is needed 
early in the season. 
If 30 lbs. of a good mixed fertilizer 
are applied to every 1,000 feet of 
garden before digging, and an equal 
amount applied between the rows 
about half-way through the season, 
all of the plant food needs of the 
average garden can be met. 
Always “water in’’ the summer ap- 
plication to prevent burning. 
PLANTING THE SEED 
Don’t try to make rows without a 
line or straight edge. Place a stake 
at each end of the row and stretch 
a line tightly between them. Make 
the furrow for the seed with a hoe. 
The old theory that seed should be 
planted deep enough to come in 
contact with soil moisture still 
holds, but in dry weather the soil 
should be watered thoroughly be- 
fore planting so the moisture will be 
right at the surface. If the row is 
then covered with a board until the 
seed germinates, it will not be neces- 
sary to bury the seed even though 
the weather is dry. 
Fine seed (onion, lettuce, cabbage, 
etc.) should not be planted more 
than 4%” deep. Medium seeds (okra, 
spinach, cucumber) 1” deep. In 
heavy soils, beans, squash, onion 
sets and peas need not be covered 
more than 1” but the soil must be 
moist. In lighter soils, 2” is deep 
enough, 



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