Home Vegetable Gardening / A Complete and Practical Guide to the Planting and Care of All Vegetables, Fruits and Berries Worth Growing for Home Use

by F. F. Rockwell

PREPARING THE SOIL

Unless your garden be a very small one indeed, it will pay to have it plowed rather than dug up by hand. If necessary, arrange the surrounding fence as suggested in the accompanying diagram, to make possible the use of a horse for plowing and harrowing. (As suggested in the chapter on Implements), if there is not room for a team, the one- horse plow, spring-tooth and spike-tooth cultivators, can do the work in very small spaces.

If however the breaking up of the garden must be done by hand, have it done deeply—down to the sub-soil, or as deep as the spading-fork will go. And have it done thoroughly, every spadeful turned completely and every inch dug. It is hard work, but it must not be slighted.