To Cultivate
“Cultivating” means breaking up the soil where it hardens about the plant. It is the most important part of gardening after planting, except “thinning out.”
Cultivating is done by use of the hoe and “cultivator,” the rake-like tool which has but few prongs. Draw the cultivator between the rows of plants every day or two. Use the hoe in smaller spaces. Use the hoe to chop down weeds below the surface of the ground, being careful not to cut into the roots of the garden plants.
In breaking up the hard soil, or “cultivating,” the weeds are destroyed, but hard soil is a worse enemy of plant babies than weeds even, although every child knows how dreadful it is for a garden to let weeds steal all the food from the baby plants.
| Baby plants need— | air, food, moisture. |
Now if there is a hard crust of soil around the roots, they cannot get the air; so we cultivate or break up the hard soil to give them air.
Baby plants cannot get food if big strong weeds steal it from them; so we cultivate to kill the weeds.
Baby plants need moisture, perhaps more than anything else, so we cultivate; for cultivating keeps in the moisture that is down in the soil. I will explain this in a very little while.
So you see Cultivating is the most important garden work.