By fertility is meant the power of the soil to furnish plant-food. Fertile soil is "rich" soil. By tillage is meant frequent stirring of the soil. For example, Billy Boy and his chum each have a flower garden side by side of equal size. Each boy sows seeds from the same bag. The same sunshine and the same rains give vigor to each flower-bed alike. Billy Boy spades the soil deep and makes it fine. His chum stirs the top and leaves clods on the surface. With the end of a sharp stick Billy makes a straight drill for the seed. On the bottom of the drill the soil is fine like meal, and the seed is sown with great care and is covered with the finest soil. If the seed is small he makes the soil covering very thin. The last thing he does is to firm the soil by patting it with either his hand or the flat part of a hoe, and he does it in an affectionate way as if he were patting a dog. His chum makes the drill for the seed in a hasty way, leaving in the bottom little clods of earth as large as hickory nuts. He sows the seed as if he were glad to get rid of it, and he covers it as if he wanted it out of sight as soon as possible.
Which of the two boys gave the better tillage to the soil? During the summer you will see how others care for their plants and you will see instances of good tillage and poor tillage. You must observe and write me which of the two had the better success in having the seed come up. The difference between the two ways does not end in sowing and germination of seed, but continues all summer until the end of the season. Billy Boy will care for the soil by combing it with a rake several times a week, with the same care and affection with which the lover of a horse will groom the animal each morning. The chum will think the plants are all like goats, and ought to live with almost any chance. Billy Boy will have no weeds among his plants and his chum will have them in great numbers. The chum may say that weeds shade the plants and thereby protect them from drought. I have known grown-up farmers to say that. Is it true? Go on a voyage of discovery and find out.
I hope your garden may be of the Billy Boy kind, receiving plenty of tillage. You will have no trouble to find any number of the other kind of gardens growing to weeds and receiving no tillage. It will please me very much if you will write me, giving as many reasons as you can why tillage makes the soil more fertile (or "rich") and able to produce better plants and flowers. Each letter will be carefully read.
An Experiment.
Perhaps you can answer the questions by watching your garden or some one's else garden; but you can answer them better if you will grow a few "hills" of corn. In the fall I shall have many questions to ask you about corn, and I want you to be able to answer by telling me what you have seen with your own eyes. Those of you who are Junior Naturalists have done well with your dues this year, but we must always do better next year than we did last; so I want you to know many things about Indian corn when you come back to school in the fall. Your teacher has also been asked to study corn, and I am going to study it myself. I am a farmer and I have grown corn all my life. Once I thought that I knew all about it; but frequently some one asks me a question about it that I cannot answer.
Now, I hope that you can plant at least ten "hills" of corn, or, if you do not plant it in "hills," you may make two rows, each of them five or ten feet long. I want you to plant part of these hills (or one of the rows) in good rich soil. Perhaps your father will let you plant them in the best part of the garden along with the cabbages or other crops; or, perhaps, your mother will let you plant them at the back part of the flower garden. Then I want you to keep down the weeds and break or cultivate the ground often with a hoe or rake so that the soil is always loose. Then I want you to plant the other part of the corn in a poor or dry piece of ground, where the weeds grow. This part you need not cultivate. I think that before the summer is half over you will learn a very great lesson by looking at these two pieces of corn. Some of you will say that you know beforehand what will happen; but I want you to grow the corn nevertheless.
By fall I hope you will be able to write me whether you can tell a rich soil when you see it, and also why you think it is rich. I want everyone of the Junior Gardeners to tell me that much when school opens.
To the Teacher:
We must depend upon your courtesy to help in reporting what has been done by you and your pupils in improvement of school grounds. In addition to this we hope it may be your pleasure to ask all the children who are able to write to tell us in detail, at some language period, what they have done. We are never able to get reports of all this good work. Many teachers feel that nothing but heroic deeds in the planting of school grounds are worthy of mention. This is a mistake. Some grounds may be more improved by attention to simple tidiness than by expensive planting, and they are equally worthy of mention.