CULTIVATING THE SOIL
The purposes of cultivation are twofold: to get rid of weeds and to stimulate growth. Growth is stimulated by letting air into the soil, freeing unavailable plant food, and by conserving moisture.
As to getting rid of the weeds, the experienced gardener knows from experience the importance of keeping his crops clean. He has learned the price of letting them get anything resembling a start. He knows that one or two days’ growth, after they are well up, followed perhaps by a day or so of rain, may easily double or triple the work of cleaning a patch of onions or carrots. Where weeds have attained any size they cannot be taken out of growing crops without doing a great deal of harm. You should also realize that every day’s growth means just so much available plant food is going to your legitimate plants.
Frequent cultivation will not only break up the soil, but let in air, moisture and heat all crucial in completing those chemical changes vital in converting unavailable food into food you plants can use. Long before science proved what farmers have always known by observation, the necessity of keeping the soil nicely loosened about their growing crops. Plants need to breathe. Their roots need air. You can’t expect to see the luxuriant dark green of healthy plant life in a suffocated garden.
Just as important as the question of air is, that of water ranks beside it. You may not realize at first what frequent cultivation has to do with water, but let us stop a moment and do a little experiment. Take a strip of blotting paper, dip one end in water, and watch the moisture run up hill, and soak up through the blotter. The scientists have labeled that “capillary attraction”. The water crawls up little invisible tubes formed by the texture of the blotter. Now take a similar piece, cut it across, hold the two cut edges firmly together, and try it again. The moisture refuses to cross the line: the connection has been severed.
As you already know, water is soaked up by the soil after a rainfall. The water on the surface will
start to evaporate almost immediately. There isn’t much you can do about that. The water that is below the surface is leaving just as fast if you are not cultivating the soil. Just like the blotter paper in our experiment, the soil has these tubes as well, and they are funneling the water away just as fast as if you had a pump hooked to them. Fortunately there is something you can do about this. Frequent cultivation of the soil, about one or two inches deep will keep these soil tubes broken up, just like when we cut the blotter in two. You should go over every part of your garden every week or two, especially in areas that are not shaded.
Keeping your garden free of weeds, especially when they are small and easier to remove, and the soil cultivated, to allow in air and water, give your garden the things necessary for it to thrive.
[tag]gardening, gardening tips, cultivating, landscaping[/tag]