Vegetable Cultivation

The uses of cultivation are to get free of weeds, and to arouse development by (1) allowing air into the soil and giving up unobtainable plant nutrient, and (2) by maintaining moisture.

Regarding weeds, the gardener of any experience need not be stated the grandness of keeping their crops sound. He has verified from bitter and dear experience the cost of letting them receive anything resembling a beginning. He knows that one or two days' development, after they are considerably rising, watched maybe by a day or so of rainfall, might well increase the exercise of cleaning a plot of onions or carrots, and that where weeds have arrived at whatever size they cannot be taken from sown crops without performing a good deal of injury. He as well figures, or should, that every last day's growth signifies just indeed much obtainable plant food stole from below the very roots of his rightful crops.

Instead of allowing the weeds make away with whatsoever plant food, he should be rendering more such, for sound and frequent cultivation will not simply split the soil up mechanically, but let air in, moisture, and warmth, every last requisite in effecting those chemical interchanges needful to switch non-available into available plant food. Long in front of the science of the subject was disclosed, the soil cultivators had determined by notice, the necessity of sustaining the soil nicely loosened around their developing crops. Even the unstudied aborigine made sure that his squaw not simply lay a bad fish underneath the hill of maize but ran her shell hoe through it. Plants want to breathe. Their roots need air. You may as well expect to observe the rosy shine of happiness on the white cheeks of a cotton-mill child slave as to expect to experience the fantastic dark green of healthy plant life in a strangled garden.

Important as the question of air is, that of water orders along side it. You might not witness at first what the issue of frequent cultivation has to do with water. Only let's halt for a minute and see into it. Acquire a slip of blotting paper, dunk one end in water, and observe the moisture move up hill, soak up through the blotting paper. The scientists have labeled that "capillary attraction", the water crawls up minute concealed tubes formed by the texture of the blotting paper. Now select a similar bit, cut it across, clutch the two cut edges securely together, and test it again. The moisture refuses to cross the line: the connection has been severed.

In the aforesaid manner the water stored in the soil after a rain starts at once to get out once more into the air. That along the surface vaporizes initially, and that which has soaked in sets out to soak in through the soil to the surface. It is exiting your garden, through the millions of soil tubes, merely as sure enough as if you got a two-inch pipe and a gasoline engine, pumping it into the sewer night and day! Preserve your garden by containing the waste. It is the easiest matter in the world to cut the piping in two. By frequent cultivation of the surface ground scarcely a couple of inches deep for almost all smaller veggies the soil tubings are preserved split, and a mulch of dust is retained. Seek to go all over every last portion of your garden, particularly where it isn't shadowed, once in every ten days or two weeks. Does that appear like too much work? You can press your wheel hoe over, and so retain the dust mulch as a continual protective covering, as swift as you can walk. If you wait for the weeds, you will almost have to crawl through, causing more such harm by distressing your evolving plants, losing all the plant nutrient (and they will take the cream) which they have consumed, and in reality committing in more hours of boundlessly more such irritating work. If the beginner at gardening hasn't been won over by the facts made, there is merely one thing left to convince him, experience.

Having presented so much space to the reason for continuous care in this affair, the question of methods of course comes. Acquire a wheel hoe. The simplest sorts will not but save you an unlimited measure of time and work, but do the work greater, a lot easier than it can be done by hand. You can grow good veggies, particularly if your garden is a very small one, without one of these labor-savers, but I can promise you that you will never regret the moderate investment required to buy it.

With a wheel hoe, the effort of maintaining the soil mulch turns dead effortless. If you haven't got a wheel hoe, for tiny areas very rapid work can be done with the scuffle hoe.

The subject of keeping weeds stripped out of the rows and between the plants in the rows isn't indeed promptly executed. Where hand-work is needed, allow it to be done at once. Here are a few real suggestions that will reduce this exercise to a minimal:

(1) Get at this work while the soil is soft; as soon as the ground commences to dry out afterward a rain is the best time. Under such conditions the weeds may be fetched out by the roots, without breaking off.

(2) Instantly in front of weeding, move all over the rows with a wheel hoe, cut shallow, but just as close as manageable, giving a thin, plainly viewable strip that must be hand-weeded. The best instrument for this use is the double wheel hoe with disc attachment, or hoes for larger plants.

(3) See to it that not just the weeds are pulled out but that every last inch of land surface is broken up. It is amply as principal that the weeds scarcely sprouting be destroyed, as that the bigger ones be drawn out. One stroke of the weeder or the fingers will destroy a hundred weed seedlings in less time than one weed can be extracted afterward it gets a good starting.

(4) Utilize one of the smaller hand-weeders until you become skilled with it. Not simply may more such work be done but the fingers will be saved needless fatigue.

The expert manipulation of the wheel hoe can be produced through rehearse solely. The first matter to ascertain is that it is essential to view the wheels only: the blades, disc or rakes will take care of themselves.

The operation of "hilling" consists of drawing the soil up around the stems of growing plants, usually at the time of second or third hoeing. It used to be the exercise to hill everything that could be hilled "up to the eyebrows," only it has step by step been tossed out for what is named "level culture". You will promptly verify the grounds from what has been stated about the leak of moisture from the surface of the soil. The two upper slopes of the mound, which may be symbolized by an equilateral triangle, yield more displayed surface than the level surface staged by the base. In damp soils or seasons hilling may be better, but very seldom otherwise. It sustains the extra disfavour of making it tough to sustain the soil mulch which is so desired.

Rotation of crops.

There is another matter to be advised in making each vegetable do its greatest, and that is crop rotation, or the succeeding of any veggie with a different type at the next planting.

With some vegetables, such as cabbage, this is well-nigh imperative, and practically all are helped by it. Even onions, which are popularly imagined to be the proving exclusion to the rule, are fitter, and do as well after some other crop, provided the land is as finely pulverized and rich as an earlier crop of onions would result.

Here are the significant rules of crop rotation:

(1) Crops of the same vegetable, or vegetables of the identical family (such as turnips and cabbage) should not follow each other.

(2) Vegetables that feed near the surface, identical to corn, should succeed deep-rooting crops.

(3) Vines or leaf crops should succeed root crops.

(4) Fast-growing crops should pursue those occupying the ground all season.

These are the principles which should specify the rotations to be observed in individual cases. The correct fashion to see to this issue is when producing the planting design. You will then have time to do it properly, and won't need to give it whatsoever further thought for a year.

With the above-mentioned suggestions in mind, and lay to use , it will not be awkward to grant the crops those particular tending that are requisite to make them do their very optimal.