| OCR Text |
Show Gardener Should Only Cultivate to Kill Weeds Some of the grief in gardening can be escaped if the gardener realizes that cultivation is needed only to kill weeds, break soil crusts, and to permit water to enter the soil. If the garden is cultivated or hoed often enough to kill the weeds, the other two factors will be automatically automati-cally accomplished. The weeding job can be done with less labor if cultivation begins when the weeds are snall. The ground should be disturbed little near the plant rows, but the cultivation may go deeper between rows where tramping is likely to pack the soil. Pulling a garden rake lightly across plant rows will help eliminate weeds but some hand work will be required to get all of them. The frequency of cultivation required re-quired is determined by the rate of weed growth. In periods of frequent rains and in warm weather, more cultivation is needed. No result other oth-er than exercise is obtained from stirring dry, weedless soil. Cultivation Cultiva-tion should not begin too soon after a rain because moisture will evaporate evapo-rate faster, and lack of water often is a limiting factor in plant growth. Any one of several types of hoes is satisfactory for garden work, and, sometimes it is an advantage to have more than one type. Heavy hoes are best for chopping weeds out of heavy soil, and the pointed hoes are better adapted for opening furrows fur-rows for planting seed. |
